Chapter Four

A Napoleon of Astuteness and Political Finesse:

Frontier Legislator (1834-1837)

After leaving his paternal home, Lincoln discovered in New Salem a surrogate father,a rotund, humorous reading man from North Carolina named Bowling Green, twenty-twoyears his senior. Green served at various times as justice of the peace, canal commissioner,doorkeeper of the Illinois House of Representatives, judge of elections, countycommissioner, sheriff, and candidate for the state senate.i He was known as a gifted spinnerof yarns and a whole-souled, jovial sort of fellow who took the world easy and cared littleas to what transpired so long as a side of bacon hung in the smokehouse, and the mealbarrel was full. During Lincolns early days in New Salem, he boarded at Greens house,which was ever full of visitors, for Green would never allow a caller to leave until he hadcrossed his feet under the table.ii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

FINDING A SURROGATE FATHER

Abner Y. Ellis reported that Lincoln Loved Mr Green as his allmost SecondFarther. Green, in turn, looked on him with pride and pleasur[e] and Used to Say thatLincoln Was a Man after his own heart. Green told Ellis that there Was good Material inAbe and he only Wanted Education. Undertaking to provide that education, Green, like aneffective mentor, nurtured his protg, lending him books, encouraging him to study, andfostering his political career. Though a prominent Democrat, Green urged Lincoln, whoopposed the Democrats, to run for the state legislature. Lincoln confided to Ellis that heowed more to Mr Green for his advancement than any other Man.iiiGreen stimulated Lincolns interest in the law by inviting him to attend sessions ofhis court. At first, Lincoln merely observed the proceedings, which were sometimes comical.When his poetry-loving friend Jack Kelso was sued by one John Ferguson for stealing a hog,Green ruled in Kelsos favor, even though he had no proof and witnesses testified that thehog was Fergusons. Green announced that the two witnesses we have heard have sworn toa lie. I know this shoat, and I know it belongs to Jack Kelso. I therefore find this case inhis favor.iv When Lincoln queried him about the verdict, Green explained that the first duty

iii Ellis added, and I think Well he May Say. Abner Y. Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois, 6 December 1866;enclosure by Abner Y. Ellis in Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois, 23 January 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds.,Herndons Informants, 501, 173. On the role of a mentor for young men, see Daniel J. Levinson, The Seasonsof a Mans Life (New York: Knopf, 1978), 97-101. Green switched his political allegiance to the Whig party inthe mid-1830s.iv James McGrady Rutledge, quoted in Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (2 vols.; New York:McClure, Phillips, 1902), 1:200-1; Abraham Lincoln, Illinois Womans Columbian Club of Menard County,Menard, Salem, Lincoln, unpaginated. Another case involving pigs allegedly came before Green, who playedthe role of Solomon in deciding it. To the contending parties he said, pick out what you think belongs to you,and keep it, if nobody else claims it. Kill all the rest and divide the meat among the claimants. Duncan andNikols, Mentor Graham, 113-14.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

295

of a court is to decide cases justly and in accordance with the truth.v Green displayed asimilarly casual approach to the niceties of the law when he asked attorney Edward D. Bakerif a justice of the peace could preside over slander suits. After Baker replied that only courtsof general jurisdiction could hear a slander case, Green expostulated: Well, think again; youhave not read law very well, or very long; try it again; now, have I not jurisdiction; can I notdo it? Once again Baker responded in the negative. After another round of such questioning,Green finally said: I know I can; for, by Heaven, I have done it.viIn time, Green allowed Lincoln to address the court.vii Lincoln had learned some lawfrom the books Green lent him, which he read in 1832 and 1833.viii Because few lawyerslived in the New Salem area, the young would-be attorney was often requested to try suits inGreens court. He accepted the challenge but turned down any remuneration. Initially thejudge, who enjoyed Lincolns humor, allowed him to practice for amusements sake. Greensfat sides would shake as he laughed at the young mans laconic presentation of cases. Soonrealizing that Lincoln was more than a mere comedian, Green came to respect his intellectualstrength.ix

v Reep, Lincoln at New Salem, 81-83.

vi Bakers speech in the U.S. Senate, 3 January 1861, Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session, 238.vii William G. Greene said Lincoln in 1832 would and frequently did, as we say Pettifog before Justice of thePeace in and about the County. This was studiously & energetically Continued up to 1834. Greene to Herndon(interview), Elm Wood, Illinois, 30 May 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 20.viii William G. Greene recalled that while he and Lincoln clerked in Offutt[]s store which was in 1832 & 33 . . . he . . . Devoured all the Law Books he could get hold of. Greene to Herndon, 29 May 1865, Wilson andDavis, eds., Herndons Informants, 12. The first book Isaac Cogdal saw in Lincolns hands was Blackstone in 1832. Cogdal, interview with Herndon, [1865-6], ibid., 440. Hardin Bale remembered that LincolnCommenced reading law in 1832 & 3 read in the mornings & Evenings would play at vari[ou]s games jumping running hopping telling stories & cracking jokes. When his associates would return in the Eveningto their various homes he would go to his reading & in the morning he would read till his associates wouldCome back the next day. Bale to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, ibid., 13.ix Jason Duncan to Herndon, [late 1866-early 1867], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 540.

296

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Green and Lincoln performed a kind of comic duet during one trial. When quizzed byan attorney about the veracity of a bibulous shoemaker named Peter Lukins, Lincolntestified: he is called lying Pete Lukins. The lawyer then asked Lincoln if he would believeLukins under oath. Lincoln turned about and said, ask Esquire Green. He has taken histestimony under oath many times. Green replied: I never believe anything he says unlesssomebody else swears the same thing.xLincoln grew close to Green and his wife, the former Nancy Potter, an unusuallymaternal, hospitable woman.xi In 1835, while suffering from depression, Lincoln repaired tothe Greens cabin, where for three weeks they nursed him back to psychological health.xiiWhen apoplexy killed Green in 1842, his widow asked Lincoln to speak at the memorialservice. He agreed to do so, but when he arose he only uttered a few words and commencedchoking and sobbing and acknowledged that he was unmanned and could not go on; hetherefore got down and went to Mrs. Greens old family carriage.xiii

x I have standardized the spelling and punctuation of this passage. J. Rowan Herndon to Herndon, Quincy,Illinois, 3 July 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 69; T. G. Onstot, Pioneers of Menard andMason Counties (Forest City, Illinois: Onstot, 1902), 166. For a biographical sketch of Lukins, see McKenzie,A Demographic Study of Select New Salem Precinct Residents, 74-76.xi Mrs. Green was a sister of Royal Potter and a half-sister to William G. Greene and to Rhoda Armstrong, wifeof John Clary. Henry B. Rankin paid tribute to Mrs. Greens hospitality: How quiet and refreshing that home,how motherly and hospitable a welcome Mrs. Greene gave him and all who came to her house, I knowpersonally. I recall the times, years later, when fishing and nutting excursions, on Saturdays or schoolvacations, were made by a half-dozen or more of us Petersburg boys. We would trail up the Sangamon with ourfishing rods, until opposite the Bowling Greene home, where we were always sure to skip across the riverbottom for Mrs. Greenes hospitable home welcome, and there we would fry our fish at the open fireplace onthe kitchen hearth. Or, when we scampered over the hills back of old Salem nutting in the fall, we would cometrooping down the bluff behind Mrs. Bowling Greenes and into her big homey kitchen, with such voraciousappetites for her hot biscuits smothered in butter and honey, her doughnuts and cookies, buttermilk, apples, andsweet cider! Henry B. Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons,1916), 82-83.xii William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndons Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis(1889; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 95; Rankin, Personal Recollections, 81-83.xiii I have standardized the spelling and punctuation of this passage. A. Y. Ellis, statement for Herndon,enclosed in Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois, 23 January 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,173. Green died and was buried in February. The memorial service took place in September. See also Wilson

297

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Even before he began attending Greens court, Lincoln had shown interest in the law.In Kentucky, he had been sued for violating the rights of a ferry operator, and in Indiana, hehad sat in on trials held before a neighboring judge. He may have actually done somepettifogging before this court, acting as a very junior attorney in minor matters.xiv To JudgeJohn Pitcher of Rockport, Indiana, young Lincoln expressed a desire to study law.xv Duringhis brief sojourn in Macon County in 1830, Lincoln read law books at the home of sheriffWilliam Warnick.xviLike many other Hoosiers, Lincoln often attended court sessions in Boonville, whereconditions were doubtless primitive.xvii A prosecuting attorney reported that court sessions ina similar community (Fall Creek) were conducted in a double log cabin where the grandjury sat upon a log in the woods, and the foreman signed the bills of indictment which I hadprepared, upon his knee. No petit juror wore shoes.xviii One Indiana judge quelled a

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

disturbance with his fists, saying: I dont know what power the law gives me keep order inthis court, but I know very well the power God Almighty gave me.xixJust as Lincoln had served in Indiana as an amanuensis for neighbors wishing to writeletters, so too in New Salem he drafted legal documents for the villagers. Daniel Burnerremembered that he was very kind and accommodating to the poor and was ever ready toplace his talents at their disposal. He had acquired the knack of drawing up papers and didnot need an office for the work. Among the beneficiaries of his generosity was Isaac Burner,for whom he drafted a deed. When preparing such documents, he used a form book.xx Forthese services he charged nothing.xxi

xix Frederick Trevor Hill, Lincoln the Lawyer (New York: Century, 1906), 20-21, 24. A French traveler in1826 described a similar scene in a Florida court, which probably resembled conditions in Indiana: A judgearrives, generally a man of merit, but not unfrequently, in this state of society, the refuse of the other tribunals.No court-house is yet in existence; the judge therefore selects the largest room of a tavern or a spacious loft. Ihave seen the court sitting in a warehouse, in which planks laid upon barrels of pork or meal formed the seats ofthe audience. A court-week is of course an occasion of excitement and profit for the inn-keepers. The peoplecome in crowds from fifty miles round, either on business or out of curiosity. The epoch of this concourse isturned to account by all those who have any thing to gain by the public; one offers his negro for sale; anotherexhibits the graces of his stallion, that he may attract customers; the lawyers look out for clients; the doctor forpatients. The sheriff opens the court and calls the causes, the noise ceases. Upon a couple of planks are rangedtwenty-four freemen, heads of families, housekeepers, forming the grand jury. What an assemblage! from thehunter in breeches and skin shirt, whose beard and razor have not met for a month the squatter in straw hat,and dressed in stuffs manufactured at home by his wife the small dealer, in all the exaggerated graces of thecounter, sitting beside the blacksmith; up to the rich planter recently arrived: all ranks, all professions, arehere confounded. Silence is commanded. The lawyers begin their pleadings with more or less talent. The judgemakes his charge with as much dignity as if he sat at Westminster, and the verdicts savour nothing of thewhimsical appearance of the court and jury.Achille Murat to Count Thibeaudau, Lipona, July 1826, in AchilleMurat, The United States of North America (2nd ed.; London: Effingham Wilson, 1833), 66-67.xx Wayne C. Temple, ed., Lincoln and the Burners at New Salem, Lincoln Herald 67 (1965): 69; Abner Y.Ellis, statement for Herndon, enclosed in Ellis to Herndon, Moro, Illinois, 23 January 1866, Wilson and Davis,eds., Herndons Informants, 170. For examples of Lincolns early legal drafts, see a deed of Isaac Colson in thehand of Lincoln, 2 June 1834, photocopy, enclosed in J. C. Luther to Wayne C. Temple, Petersburg, Illinois, 17August 1964, in the possession of Dr. Temple; Rufus Rockwell Wilson, ed., Uncollected Works of AbrahamLincoln (2 vols.; Elmira, N.Y.: Primavera Press, 1947-48), 1:38, 54, 57; and Roy P. Basler et al., eds.,Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols. plus index; New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,1953-55), 1:3-4, 15-16, 18-19.xxi Mentor Graham to Herndon (interview), Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds.,Herndons Informants, 10. See also William G. Greene, interview with Herndon, Elm Wood, Illinois, 30 May1865, and Caleb Carman, interview with Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 12 October 1866, ibid., 20, 374.

299

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

In addition to Bowling Green, Lincoln once pettifogged before Justice of the PeaceSamuel Berry, uncle of Lincolns ill-starred business partner, William F. Berry. The caseinvolved a young woman impregnated by a swain who refused to marry her. Lincolncompared her plight with that of her seducer, likening the young mans honor to a whitedress that, if soiled, could be washed clean; but the young womans honor resembled a glassbottle that, once broken, was gone. Lincoln reportedly won a $100 judgment for his client.xxiiIn 1832, Lincoln had considered studying law in earnest, but hesitated because helacked the requisite educational background.xxiii His trepidation was understandable, for themost widely used legal text, William Blackstones Commentaries on the Laws of England,recommended that the prospective law student should have formed both his sentiments, andstyle, by perusal and imitation of the purest classical writers, among whom the historians andorators will best deserve his regard; should be able to reason with precision, and separateargument from fallacy, by the clear and simple rules of pure unsophisticated logic, and tosteadily pursue truth through any of the most intricate deductions, by the use ofmathematical demonstrations; should have enlarged his conceptions of nature and art, by aview of the several branches of genuine, experimental philosophy; should have impressedon his mind the found maxims of the law of nature, the best and most authentic foundation ofhuman laws; and, finally, should have contemplated those maxims reduced to a practicalsystem in the laws of imperial Rome.xxiv

xxii Fern Nance Pond, ed., The Memoirs of James McGrady Rutledge, 1814-1899, Journal of the IllinoisState Historical Society 29 (1936): 84-85. The young womans stepfather, a gentleman named Edwards, hadasked Lincoln to help her.xxiii Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln,4:65.xxiv Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed.; Dublin: John Exshaw, 1771), 1:33.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

300

Two years later Lincoln was far less intimidated by the mysteries of BlackstonesCommentaries, a copy of which he bought at an auction.xxv This change in attitude may haveresulted from his experience in Springfield in April 1833, when he served as a witness in twocases and a juror in three others. Over half of the members of the bar that he might haveobserved in these proceedings had attended neither college nor law school. Moreover, thepresiding magistrate may have been unimposing. In 1835, a New York attorney observedJudge Stephen T. Logan of the Sangamon Circuit Court with his chair tilted back and hisheels as high as his head, and in his mouth a veritable corn cob pipe; his hair standing nineways for Sunday, while his clothing was more like that worn by a woodchopper thananybody else. If Lincoln beheld such a jurist, he may have overcome his self-consciousnessabout his own appearance.xxvi Around that time, he told Lynn M. Greene that he had talkedwith men who had the reputation of being great men, but could not see that they differedfrom other men.xxvii Perhaps some of those great men were Springfield lawyers. Lincolnmay also have been encouraged by his experience as a pettifogger before Bowling Green andSamuel Berry.With his powerfully analytical mind, Lincoln might well have been drawn to lawyersas a class, for they were reputedly the most intelligent members of frontier society. In 1854,an Ohio Methodist minister said he could recollect distinctly when, if a father had three sonsand was able to give them an education, he selected the brightest for a lawyer, the next for a

xxv William Dean Howells, Life of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Harry E. Pratt (Springfield: Abraham LincolnAssociation, 1938, facsimile edition with Lincolns emendations in the 1860 edition), 31. Lincoln read thiscampaign biography and in the margin corrected errors. He let this story stand, casting doubt on another versionof this story, which had Lincoln find a copy of Blackstone in a barrel of junk.xxvi Harry E. Pratt, The Genesis of Lincoln the Lawyer, Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association 57(1939): 1-8. Logan was described by Richard H. Beach of New York City. History of Sangamon County(Chicago: Interstate Publishing, 1881), 183.xxvii L. M. Greene, interview with James Q. Howard, [May 1860], Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.

301

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

doctor, and the dullest of all for a preacher.xxviii The high social status of attorneys wasobvious because they often occupied the largest and best-appointed houses.xxix Beyond theseconsiderations, Lincolns appetite for politics, a field where lawyers had an advantage overnon-lawyers, doubtless grew more intense after his 1834 electoral victory.xxx As a studentwho worked with Lincoln observed, he took up the law as a means of livelihood, but hisheart was in politics. Lincoln delighted, he reveled in it [politics], as a fish does in water,as a bird disports itself on the sustaining air.xxxi Lincolns third law partner, William H.Herndon, varied the metaphor, declaring that politics was his life and newspapers his food,while the law merely served as a stepping stone to a political life.xxxiiFurther stimulating his ambition to become a lawyer was encouragement from thesophisticated, dapper, grave, dignified, college-educated attorney, John Todd Stuart.xxxiii Acolleague at the bar described the tall, slender Stuart as the handsomest man in Illinois,with the mildest and most amiable expression of countenance. He was ever cheerful,social and good-humored and had the reputation of being the ablest and most efficient jurylawyer in the State.xxxiv Supreme Court Associate Justice David Davis called Stuart a

xxviii James B. Finley, Sketches of Western Methodism (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1854), 180.xxix James M. Miller, The Genesis of Western Culture: The Upper Ohio Valley, 1800-1825 (Columbus: OhioState Archaeological and Historical Society, 1938), 58-59.xxx James W. Gordon, Lawyers in Politics: Mid-Nineteenth Century Kentucky as a Case Study (Ph.D.dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1980), 394-414; Heinz Eulau and John D. Sprague, Lawyers in Politics: AStudy in Professional Convergence (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964).xxxi Gibson W. Harris, My Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Womans Home Companion, November1903, 10.xxxii Herndon, Lincoln the Lawyer, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress.xxxiii C. C. Brown, Major John T. Stuart, Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society 7 (1902): 112.xxxiv Usher F. Linder, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (Chicago: Chicago Legal News,1879), 348. Stuart was especially effective in trespass and slander cases, preventing the recovery of largedamages for the plaintiff when he was for the defendant. Ibid. Another attorney deemed Stuart one of the bestmen and ablest thinkers Illinois has ever produced. Joseph Gillespie, quoted ibid., 19.

302

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Christian gentleman of the old school, a generous man with polished manners andcommanding presence who served as a peacemaker, fomenting no litigation. Davisranked him among the best nisi prius [i.e., trial] lawyers in the state, a man whosepersuasive address and captivating manner went to the heart of the average juryman.xxxvA Springfield woman who spent much of her youth in Stuarts home deemed him a type ofa gentleman of the olden times, so gentle and courteous with as fine and gallant a bow forhis laundress as for a Duchess.xxxviAfter graduating from Center College in 1826, Stuart studied law with Judge DanielBreck in Kentucky, his native state. Two years later he settled in Springfield, where in 1833he formed a partnership with Henry E. Dummer. The previous year Stuart had enteredpolitics, running successfully for the legislature, where he quickly became a Whig leader inthe House of Representatives.xxxvii There he was known as Jerry Sly for his great powersof sly management and intrigue.xxxviii William Herndon thought him tricky and adodger.xxxix Political opponents denounced Stuart as indolent and inefficient, condemnedwhat they called his low cunning, and bestowed upon him the sobriquets sleepy Johnnyxxxv David Davis, address to the Illinois State Bar Association, 13 January 1886, Bloomington, Illinois,Pantagraph, 6 February 1886.xxxvi Caroline Owsley Brown, Springfield Society Before the Civil War, Journal of the Illinois StateHistorical Society 15 (1922): 490.xxxvii Although the term Whig was not adopted widely by the anti-Jackson forces till later in the decade, Ihave used it to describe the anti-Jacksonian element throughout the 1830s. As a leading historian of the partyhas noted, To call all who opposed the Jackson administration before 1836 Whigs or to speak of a Whigparty in the mid-1830s is more a literary convenience than an accurate description of fact. Although theopponents of Jackson could cooperate in Congress and although they cheered on each others efforts indifferent states, they had developed no central organization. More important, they had not yet formed anyinstitutional loyalties to the new Whig party. Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party: JacksonianPolitics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 39. In 1835 Stephen A.Douglas referred to the opposition party as the self stiled Whig Party. Douglas to Julius N. Granger,Jacksonville, 9 May 1835, Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press, 1961), 17.xxxviii Linder, Reminiscences, 348.

303

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

and the Rip Van Winkle of the Junto.xl Stuart also served in the Black Hawk War, wherehe first met Lincoln.In a third-person autobiographical sketch, Lincoln said that during the electioncampaign of 1834, in a private conversation [John Todd Stuart] encouraged A[braham] tostudy law. After the election he borrowed books of Stuart, took them home with him, andwent at in good earnest.xli According to Lincolns good friend David Davis, Stuart saw atonce that there must be a change of occupation to give Lincoln a fair start in life, and that thestudy and practice of law were necessary to stimulate his ambition and develop his faculties.When Lincoln stated difficulties which he deemed insurmountable, Stuart overcame them,and Lincoln agreed to give the matter thoughtful consideration. Eventually Lincolnyielded to Stuarts solicitations, and read law at his country home, some distance fromSpringfield.xlii Jesse W. Fell also believed that Stuart played a vital role in persuadingLincoln to become a lawyer: it is very questionable, indeed, whether he ever would haveadopted this profession had he not been thus associated. Lincoln at the time doubted hiscapacity to make the practice of law a success. In addition, he always had an instinctive

xxxix Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 10 December 1885, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress.xl Illinois State Register (Springfield), 14 May, 3 September, and 9 July 1841.xli Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln,4:65. Scripps, in his campaign biography of Lincoln, noted that during the 1834 canvass, his subject wasthrown considerably into the company of Hon. John T. Stuart . . . . To Lincolns great surprise, Mr. Stuartwarmly urged him to study law. Mr. Stuart was a gentleman of education, an able lawyer, and in every respectone of the foremost men of the State. Advice of this character, tendered by one so competent to give it, couldnot be otherwise than gratifying to a young man, as yet unknown to fame outside of New Salem precinct, andbeing accompanied by a generous offer to loan him whatever books he might need, Lincoln resolved to followit. As soon as the election was over, he took home with him a few books from the law library of Mr. Stuart, andentered upon their study in his usually earnest way. John Locke Scripps, Life of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P.Basler and Lloyd A. Dunlap (1860; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 69-70. Nathaniel B.Thompsons son William claimed that Lincoln borrowed law books from his father, but no evidencecorroborates that assertion. Walter B. Stevens, A Reporters Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (1916; Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 8.xlii David Davis, address to the Illinois State Bar Association, 13 January 1886, Bloomington, Illinois,Pantagraph, 6 February 1886.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

304

aversion to the practice as too often followed, burying the man in the advocate. Stuart, withhis knowledge of the world, of Mr. Lincoln and his surroundings, was just the one toovercome doubts and remove obstacles.xliii (Years later, Stuart predicted that he would beremembered only as as the man who advised Mr. Lincoln to study law and lent him his lawbooks.)xlivLincoln claimed to have mastered forty pages of Blackstone during the first day afterhis return from Stuarts office.xlv He recalled that after obtaining Stuarts copy ofBlackstones Commentaries, I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time;for, during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, mycustomers were few and far between. The more I read the more intensely interested I became.Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devouredthem.xlviBlackstone was widely read by aspiring attorneys, though some authorities found itunsuitable for Americans. In 1844, a critic in the Western Literary Journal and MonthlyReview observed acidly that the renowned work of Blackstone has been universally, andcontinues to be generally, the first book put into the hand of the American Student; and, afterhe has tortured himself, and exhausted his patience for six long months in memorizing the

xliii Jesse W. Fell to David Davis, Normal, Illinois, 15 December 1885, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 14January 1886.xliv Brown, Springfield Society Before the Civil War, 490.xlv Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Lincoln, 79. Much later, Stuart told a journalist that Lincoln kept thebooks in a still house where he worked for a time while in New Salem and read them during leisure moments.Washington correspondence, 26 November, Chicago Tribune, 1 December 1864. According to one of DanielGreen Burners descendants, Burner operated a small still in New Salem. Wayne C. Temple, introduction toLincoln and the Burners at New Salem, in Charles M. Hubbard et al., eds., The Many Faces of Lincoln:Selected Articles from the Lincoln Herald (Mahomet, Illinois: Mayhaven, 1997), 178.xlvi Alban Jasper Conant, My Acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln (pamphlet; New York: De Vinne Press,1893), 172. See also Conant, A Portrait Painters Reminiscences of Lincoln, McClures Magazine 32 (March1909): 514. This quote also appears in Reep, Lincoln at New Salem, 53.

305

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

prerogatives of the crown, the sources of revenue, hereditary rights, the political andecclesiastical constitution of the government, the feudal services, relations of knights andvassal, and the history of English jurisprudence from the invasion of William the Norman, hewill be found on examination about as wise a lawyer as he would be, had he spent the sametime upon the novels of Sir Walter Scott.xlviiLike Bowling Green, Stuart became Lincolns mentor, though not a surrogate father(he was little more than a year older than Lincoln). Jesse W. Fell, who spent the winter of1834-35 in Vandalia with Lincoln and Stuart while they served in the state legislature, calledthem two congenial spirits not only boarding at the same house but rooming and sleepingtogether. Socially and politically they seemed inseparable. David Davis believed thatLincoln and Stuart loved one another. Indeed, Fell said, they were boon companions,though quite different in temperament and appearance. Stuart, who had all the adornmentsof a polished gentleman, provided a startling contrast to Lincoln: raw-boned angular,features deeply furrowed, ungraceful, almost uncouth; having little, if any, of the polish soimportant in society life.xlviiiWhen Lincoln began to go at the law in good earnest following the 1834 election,he once again studied with nobody, save Stuart. It was not difficult to become a member ofthe bar in Illinois. Men in the west are admitted to practice much less qualified than they arein the east, a resident of Champaign County reported. An ordinary intelligent man with a

xlvii Review of Walkers Introduction to American Law, Western Literary Journal and Monthly Review, 1(December 1844): 107, quoted in Mark Steiner, Abraham Lincoln and the Antebellum Legal Profession(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Houston, 1993), 111.xlviii Jesse W. Fell to David Davis, Normal, Illinois, 15 December 1885, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 14January 1886; David Davis, address to the Illinois State Bar Association, 13 January 1886, Bloomington,Illinois, Pantagraph, 6 February 1886. Stuart recalled that he and Lincoln were roommates at the time: Lincolnand I were then rooming together in one of the up stairs rooms of one of those large frame houses in Vandalia.Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 24 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln,12.

306

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

moderate education can be admitted in about one year.xlix As an autodidact, Lincoln wasunusual. In the 1830s and 1840s, most lawyers learned their craft in an attorneys office; onlya handful attended law school. He may not have missed much. Joseph Story maintained thatthe dry and uninviting drudgery of an office was utterly inadequate to lay a justfoundation for accurate knowledge in the learning of the law.l Josiah Quincy described thepedagogy in a typical law office unflatteringly: of regular instruction there was none;examination as to progress in acquaintance with the law, none; occasional lectures, none;oversight as to general attention and conduct, none.li In 1840, a New York attorneyexplained the inadequacy of mentoring for would-be lawyers: The practitioners, to whoseoffices they are attached, do not pretend, generally speaking, to afford them this instruction.Receiving no compensation, and immersed in the cares and labors of practice, they haveneither time nor inclination for the performance of this duty.liiLincoln followed a regimen that twenty-four years later he would prescribe to ayoung man who had asked him about the best mode of obtaining a thorough knowledge ofthe law. Lincoln replied: The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is onlyto get the books, and read, and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstones Commentaries,and after reading it carefully through, say twice, take up Chittys Pleadings, Greenleafs

xlix Allen B. Clough to Andrew Clough, Tolono, Illinois, 16 November 1859, Clough Papers, Chicago HistoryMuseum.l Memoir of the Late Mr. Justice Story, The Legal Observer, or Journal of Jurisprudence (1846), 261.li Quincy, An Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Dane Law College in Harvard University, October 23,1832, in Perry Miller, ed., The Legal Mind in America from Independence to the Civil War (Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1962), 210-11.lii Thomas W. Clerke, Introductory Discourse, on the Study of Law, Delivered before the New York LawSchool, in the City Hall, in the City of New York, on the 23d. Nov. 1840, in Rudiments of American Law andPractice, on the Plan of Blackstone; Prepared for the Use of Students at Law, and Adapted to Schools andColleges (New York: Gould, Banks, 1842), xi.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

307

Evidence, & Storys Equity &c. in succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing.liii Twoyears earlier, he had indirectly recommended the same course of study to another would-beattorney: When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has, and has already been doingfor himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructer. That isprecisely the way I came to the law.liv In 1855, he wrote to yet another potential law student:If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than halfdone already. It is but a small matter whether you read with any body or not. I did not readwith any one. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in theirprincipal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large townwhile you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living init. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places. . . .Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any otherone thing.lvIn 1860, Lincoln gave similar advice to a young friend who had appliedunsuccessfully for admission to Harvard. Though pained by the news of the lads rejection,Lincoln urged him not to despair: there is very little in it, if you will allow no feeling ofdiscouragement to seize, and prey upon you. It is a certain truth, that you can enter, and

liii Lincoln to John M. Brockman, Springfield, 25 September 1860, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln,4:121. Joseph Chitty wrote A Practical Treatise on Pleading; and on the Parties to Action, and the Forms ofActions; with a Second Volume Containing Precedents of Pleadings (New York: Robert MDermut, 1809).Joseph Story wrote Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence as Administered in England and America (Boston:Hilliard, Gray, 1836). Storys Commentaries on Equity Pleadings and the Incidents Thereto, According to thePractice of the Courts of Equity of England and America (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1838)and Simon Greenleafs Treatise on the Law of Evidence (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1842) werepublished after Lincoln had completed his legal studies.liv Lincoln to James T. Thornton, Springfield, 2 December 1858, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln,3:344.lv Lincoln to Isham Reavis, Springfield, 5 November 1855, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 2:327. Hegave similar advice to William H. Grigsby. Lincoln to Grigsby, Springfield, 3 August 1858, in For the People:A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association 5 (summer 2003): 8.

308

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

graduate in, Harvard University; and having made the attempt, you must succeed in it.Must is the word. I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age,and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you willnot. . . . In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a betterscholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who haveentered college more easily.lviSome of his neighbors in New Salem were nonplussed by Lincolns resolute study ofthe law. Before he began preparing himself for an attorneys life, he was regarded as a ratherhappy-go-lucky fellow. Parthena Hill told a journalist, I dont think Mr. Lincoln wasoverindustrious. . . . He didnt do much. His living and his clothes cost little. He likedcompany, and would talk to everybody, and entertain them and himself.lvii George Kirbyremembered him as a shiftless young man, who worked at odd jobs,lviii and Stephen T.Logan gained the impression that at New Salem, Lincoln was a sort of loafer.lixBut when Lincoln devoted himself to legal studies, he seemed a different man.Russell Godbey recalled that the first time I Ever Saw him with a law book in his hands hewas Sitting astraddle of Jake Bail[]s wood pile in New Salem Said to him Abe whatare you Studying Studying law replied Abe. Godbey exclaimed: Great God

lvi Lincoln to George C. Latham, Springfield, 22 July 1860, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 4:87.lvii Parthena Hill, interview with Walter B. Stevens, 1886, Stevens, A Reporters Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 9.lviii Paul Hull, Lincoln as a Wrestler, New York Mail and Express, 11 January 1896, p. 11. See also PaulHull, Lincolns Life at New Salem, 13 October 1895, unidentified clipping, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, AlleghenyCollege. George Kirby (b. 1813) was the son of Cyrus Kirby, who moved from Kentucky to Illinois in the mid1810s. He first bought land in New Salem in 1826. McKenzie, A Demographic Study of Select New SalemPrecinct Residents, 69-71.lix Logan, interviewed by John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 6 July 1875, in Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 35.

309

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Almighty!lx Some New Salemites thought Lincoln deranged. Henry McHenry rememberedthat when Lincoln began to study law he would go day after day for weeks and sit under anoak tree on a hill near Salem, and read moved round tree to keep in shade was soabsorbed that people said he was crazy. Sometimes he did not notice people when he metthem.lxi For the first time since arriving in New Salem, Lincoln seemed anti-social,according to Robert B. Rutledge: I think he never avoided men until he commenced thestudy of Law, further than to read & study at late hours after the business of the day wasdisposed of. Rutledge recollected that in the Summer season he frequently retired to thewoods to read & study.lxii Once Lincoln began studying law, he quit reading poetry.lxiiiHenry McHenry and others plagued Lincoln because they found it strange that he walkedall the way to Springfield for books.lxiv (When they also teased him about his first name, hebegan signing letters and documents A. Lincoln.)lxv Stuarts law partner, Henry E.Dummer, was not so critical: Lincoln used to come to our office in Spfgd and borrow books . . . . he was an uncouth looking lad did not say much what he did say he said itstrongly Sharply.lxvi Lincoln so enjoyed this informal legal training that many years later,

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

310

when his son Robert expressed a desire to attend law school, he remarked: Son, if you studylaw at Harvard you will doubtless learn more than I ever did, but you will never have as gooda time.lxviiAfter moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln continued to work hard at mastering thelaw. Herndon remembered that Lincoln was not fond of physical exercise, but his mentalapplication was untiring. Sometimes he would study twenty-four hours without food orsleep, . . . often walking unconscious, his head on one side, thinking and talking, tohimself.lxviiiIn 1836, Lincoln took some of the necessary formal steps to become a lawyer. InMarch, he obtained a certificate of good moral character from Stephen T. Logan, and sixmonths later he received his license from the Illinois Supreme Court. After another sixmonths, a clerk of that court officially enrolled him as a lawyer.lxix No record survives of therequired examination that Lincoln took, but it probably resembled the one administered toJohn Dean Caton by Justice Samuel D. Lockwood of the Illinois Supreme Court. (Accordingto his family tradition, Lockwood examined Lincoln by taking him out for a walk andquestioning him as they strolled along.)lxx The judge asked Caton what books he had readand how long and with whom he had studied. Then he inquired of the different forms ofaction, and the objects of each, some questions about criminal law, and the law of the

lxvii Robert Todd Lincoln told this story to William H. Shaw. It was repeated in his obituary in the BrooklynDaily Eagle, *CHECK DATE 27 July 1926.lxviii Herndon, quoted in Volney Hickox, Lincoln at Home, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 15 October1874.lxix Statement by J. McCan Davis, clerk of the Illinois supreme court, Springfield, 15 March 1909, Joseph B.Oakleaf Papers, Indiana University.lxx Mary King Porter to Bernard J. Cigrand, Washington, D.C., n.d., quoted in an article by Cigrand, ChicagoDaily News, 12 February 1916, clipping in William E. Bartons scrapbooks, University of Chicago, AbrahamLincoln, vol. 1.

311

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

administration of estates, and especially of the provisions of our statutes on these subjects.The exam lasted no more than half an hour, after which Lockwood told Caton that he wouldgive me a license, although I had much to learn to make me a good lawyer, and said I hadbetter adopt some other pursuit, unless I was determined to work hard, to read much and tothink strongly of what I did read; that good strong thinking was as indispensable to success inthe profession as industrious reading; but that both were absolutely important to enable aman to attain eminence as a lawyer, or even respectability.lxxi Gustave Koerner rememberedundergoing a similarly casual examination, after which he and another candidate for the bartreated their examiners to a round of brandy toddies. Koerner found this quite a contrast tothe bar exam he had taken in his native Germany, where leading jurists grilled him for fourhours in Latin.lxxii

FRESHMAN LEGISLATOR

In December 1834, legislative duties interrupted Lincolns self-education in the law.

Until taking his seat in the General Assembly, he had been indifferent about clothing. Hewent about a good deal of the time without any hat. His yellow tow-linen pants he usuallywore rolled up one leg and down the other.lxxiii Overcoming his sartorial insouciance, thefreshman legislator decided to purchase new garments. With a political ally, HughArmstrong, Lincoln approached his friend Coleman Smoot and asked: Smoot, did you vote

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

for me? Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he replied: Well, you must loan me moneyto buy suitable clothing for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature. Smootobliged with a generous loan, which Lincoln used to buy a very respectable looking suit ofjeans, garb which made an ideological as well as a fashion statement; the Whig championHenry Clay once wore similar apparel to demonstrate support for protective tariffs and theconsumption of American-made goods.lxxiv The outfit was probably inexpensive; much laterhe said, I have very rarely in my life worn a suit of Clothes costing $28.lxxvIn the capital city of Vandalia, a primitive village of about 800 souls located seventyfive miles south of Springfield, Lincoln and three dozen other newcomers joined nineteenreturning veterans in the House of Representatives. Three quarters of the legislators were,like Lincoln, Southern-born.lxxvi The second-youngest member of that chamber, he belongedto the minority anti-Jackson faction, which numbered only about eighteen in the lower house;the Democrats were thrice as numerous.lxxvii The factions had not yet become parties in themodern sense of the term. It is difficult to catch the hang of parties here, reported anIllinoisan to his congressman in Washington, for altho there is considerable party feeling

lxxiv Coleman Smoot to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 7 May 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 254.lxxv Leonard Swett to Herndon, Chicago, 16 January 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,160.lxxvi Harry E. Pratt, Lincoln in the Legislature (pamphlet; Madison: Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin,1947), 4. For a general overview of Lincolns four terms in the Illinois state legislature, see Paul Simon,Lincolns Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,1965), and Richard Lawrence Miller, Lincoln and His World: Prairie Politician, 1834-1842 (Mechanicsburg,Pennsylvania: Stackpole, 2008).lxxvii Charles Manfred Thompson, The Illinois Whigs Before 1846 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,1915), 47. In 1834 and 1836, the anti-Jackson forces won only 38% of the seats in the Illinois House ofRepresentatives. Holt, Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 51. William C. Greenup estimated the politicalcharacter of the Legislature as about 60 for the [Jackson] administration & 21 against it. William C.Greenup to Elias Kent Kane, Vandalia, 20 December 1834, copy made by Elizabeth Duncan Putnam, PutnamFamily Papers, Putnam Museum, Davenport, Iowa.

313

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

there is very little party organization.lxxviii John Todd Stuart recalled that party disciplinewas lax: things were done and measures were carried very much by personal influence andpersonal arrangement. To illustrate his point, Stuart noted that the Clay men elected all ornearly all the Circuit Judges. Most of Clays supporters (but not Lincoln) also voted forDemocrat Stephen A. Douglas as states attorney rather than their party colleague, John J.Hardin, in order to get the vote to pass the Bank Bill.lxxix (The legislation establishing theIllinois state bank, one of the most important accomplishments of the Ninth GeneralAssembly, passed the House by one vote.)lxxx The anti-Jackson forces in Illinois did notformally coalesce to form the Whig party until 1838.lxxxiAs a lawyer, Lincoln was in the occupational minority as well. Most of his colleagueswere farmers, many of them unsophisticated.lxxxii Representative Alfred W. Cavarlypronounced the word unique you-ni-kue; when someone asked for a definition, a wagreplied that it was the female of the unicorn.lxxxiii (A Springfield lobbyist remarked onCavarlys very inordinate enlargement of the organ of self-esteem. This is shown in thepomposity of his delivery and the elevation of his ideas, which are sometimes so dape andso profound, as Paddy OFlanagan said of the preacher, that the divil a word can you

lxxviii Dr. James C. Finley to Joseph Duncan, Jacksonville, 27 May 1834, Duncan-Putnam Family Papers,Putnam Museum, Davenport, Iowa. See Kurt E. Leichtle, The Rise of Jacksonian Politics in Illinois, Journalof the Illinois State Historical Society 82 (1989) 93-107.lxxix J. T. Stuart, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 24 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 13. On 10 February 1835, the legislature, by a margin of four votes, chose Douglas to replace Hardinas states attorney. The Whig Circuit Judges included Stephen T. Logan, Justin Martin Harlan, John Pearson,and Thomas Ford.lxxx The legislature established a state bank and rechartered two banks that had gone out of business. WilliamGerald Shade, Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865 (Detroit: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1972), 32.lxxxi Thompson, Illinois Whigs, 60.lxxxii Simon, Lincolns Preparation for Greatness, 21.lxxxiii Joseph Gillespies appendix to Usher Linder, Reminiscences, 401.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

and as a synonym used the neologism embriggelment.lxxxv In 1840, David Davis observedthat the politicians of the State, of both parties, are of a medium order of intellect. Afterserving in the General Assembly, Davis reported at the close of a session: I do not think thatthe legislature has done much harm. We never inquire, whether it has ever done any good.In 1847, he denounced the legislature as the great source of evil in this State. If there hadbeen none in session for 10 yrs. Ill[inoi]s w[oul]d have been a very prosperous state.lxxxvi Anobserver of the 1840-41 House of Representatives said that it appeared to be composed allof young men, some of them mere boys; it forcibly reminded me of a debating school of boystudents.lxxxviiThomas Ford, governor of Illinois in the 1840s, took a more charitable view ofIllinois legislators, most of whom were, in his view, gladhanders. The great prevailingprinciple upon which each party acted in selecting candidates for office was to get popularmen, he recalled. Men who had made themselves agreeable to the people by a continualshow of friendship . . . who were loved for their gaiety, cheerfulness, apparent goodness ofheart, and agreeable manners. Though unlearned, the members of the General Assemblywere, Ford said, generally shrewd, sensible men who, from their knowledge of humannature and tact in managing the masses are amongst the master spirits of their several

lxxxiv A lobby member to the editor, 31 December 1840, Quincy Whig, 16 January 1841.lxxxv John G. Nicolay to John Hay, Washington, 29 January 1864, in Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in theWhite House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860-1865 (Carbondale: SouthernIllinois University Press, 2000), 12; Milton Hay to John Hay, Springfield, 8 February 1887, John Hay Papers, BrownUniversity.lxxxvi Davis to William P. Walker, Bloomington, Illinois, 16 November 1840, Springfield, 2 March 1844 and25 June 1847, David Davis Papers, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield.lxxxvii An eastern visitor quoted in the introduction to Harry E. Pratt, ed., Lincoln 1840-1846: Being theDay-by-Day Activities of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1939), xiv.

315

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

counties.lxxxviii Not all legislators were amiable conciliators, however; some hotheadschallenged their opponents to duels.lxxxixThe capitol was unprepossessing. The leader of the senate, William Lee DavidsonEwing, called the decade-old structure with its falling plaster, sagging floors, cracked andbulging walls, and crumbling bricks manifestly inconvenient for the transaction of publicbusiness.xc The buildings style was primitive and plain as a Quaker meeting house andthe furniture was as plain and primitive as the structure. No cushioned chairs, but long, hardbenches were the seats of the members. The Speaker of the House of Representatives saton an arm chair on a platform hardly large enough to contain it, and a few inches high, with aboard before him for a desk supported by several sticks.xci Built hurriedly on low, wetground, this statehouse was replaced in 1836 with a more substantial edifice which wasplain, not to say ugly.xciiSome members of the General Assembly thought the town the dullest, dreariestplace, and the governor complained that there is no young ladies in Vandalia.xciii Thesleepy hamlet, which one of its founders called a most dull and miserable village when the

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

General Assembly was not in session, came to life with the legislators arrival.xciv On theopening day of the 1834 session, a Vandalian reported that last night, all night nearly thistown has been a scene of busy, buzzing bargaining, etc. It is said 150 persons, some from themost distant parts of the State [are vying] for the appointments of Sergeant at Arms of theSenate and Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives.xcvPrimitive as it was, Vandalia with its book shop, jewelry store, furniture emporium,and other businesses must have seemed glamorous to the rough young legislator from NewSalem.xcvi It certainly did to Representative John J. Hardins wife, who in 1839 wrote fromher home in Jacksonville: I miss the intellectual feasts I enjoyed at Vandalia.xcvii A friendof hers wondered how can she bear with the dull monotonous town of Jacksonville afterleaving the gay scenes of the splendid city of Vandalia.xcviii In 1830, a visitor to the capitalmarveled that three meetings of an antiquarian and historical society have already takenplace, and the whole of their published proceedings are as regular, and as well conducted,and as well printed . . . as if the seat of society had been at Oxford or Cambridge.xcix In thewinter of 1838-39, lectures were given at the statehouse by an officer in Napoleons armyand a visitor from McKendree College, among others; the topics included temperance,

Platteville, Wisconsin, 1870, 21, Evans Public Library, Vandalia.xcv David Jewett Baker of Kaskaskia to Elias Kent Kane, Vandalia, 1 December 1834, copy made by ElizabethDuncan Putnam, Putnam Family Papers, Putnam Museum, Davenport, Iowa.xcvi Stroble, High on the Okaws Western Bank, 123.xcvii Sarah Smith Hardin to John J. Hardin, Jacksonville, 19 February 1839, Hardin Family Papers, ChicagoHistory Museum.xcviii Lemuel H. Smith to John J. Hardin, Shelbyville, 2 March 1837, Hardin Family Papers, Chicago HistoryMuseum. Mrs. Hardin said of Jacksonville: there are so few subjects of interest in this town that I amnecessarily obliged to concentrate my feelings to my own family. Sarah Smith Hardin to John J. Hardin,Jacksonville, 27 April 1840, ibid.xcix James Stuart, Three Years in North America (2 vols.; Edinburgh: R. Cadell, 1833), 2:227.

317

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

phrenology, and Prussian education. James Hall, a journalist and litterateur, promotedintellectual life in the capital, helping to found schools and lyceums.c During sessions of thelegislature, parties, dances, and receptions enlivened society.ciLincoln particularly enjoyed socializing with Senator Orville H. Browning of Quincyand his wife Eliza, a proud, friendly, ambitious, charming and witty woman.cii SenatorBrowning told an interviewer: Lincoln had seen but very little of what might be calledsociety and was very awkward, and very much embarrassed in the presence of ladies. Mrs.Browning very soon discovered his great merits, and treated him with a certain frankcordiality which put Lincoln entirely at his ease. On this account he became very muchattached to her. He used to come to our room, and spend his evenings with Mrs. Browning. . .. most of his spare time was occupied in this way.ciii In 1839, Lincoln and three otherlegislators light-heartedly invited Mrs. Browning to come from her home in Quincy to thecapital, bringing in your train all ladies in general, who may be at your command; and allMrs. Brownings sisters in particular.civIn the 1830s, the legislature wielded more power than it would later exercise. AsGovernor Thomas Ford described it, his office was feeble and clothed with but littleauthority, while the legislators came fresh from the people and were clothed with almost

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

the entire power of government.cv Voters chose only the governor, lieutenant governor,senators, and representatives; all other state officers were selected by the GeneralAssembly.cvi People paid little attention to government, so long as it left them alone.Politicians took advantage of this lethargic state of indifference of the people to advancetheir own projects, to get offices and special favors from the legislature, which were all theybusied their heads about. Governor Ford decried the fraud and deceit that legislatorsemployed in passing special legislation and creating offices and jobs, while ignoring thegeneral welfare. He lamented that the frequent legislative elections; the running to and froof the various cliques and factions before each election; the anxiety of members for theirpopularity at home; the settlement of plans to control future elections, to sustain the party inpower on the one side and to overthrow it on the part of the minority, absorb nearly thewhole attention of the legislature and leave but little disposition or time to be devoted tolegitimate legislation.cvii In 1835, Lincolns colleague in the General Assembly, fellowWhig William H. Fithian, complained from Vandalia that Such times as we have here, arenot well calculated to inspire desires to come here again. Too much blowing off steam, forexpedition [of] business. Four years later, he lamented that We have been here now twoweeks and as yet so far as I can judge, not one measure has been adopted for the benefit of

cv Thomas Ford, History of Illinois from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847, ed. Rodney O. Davis(1854; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 212.cvi Rodney O. Davis, The People in Miniature: The Illinois General Assembly, 1818-1848, IllinoisHistorical Journal 81 (1988): 95-108; Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 61.cvii Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 201.

319

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

the people of Illinois.cviii The Chicago Democrat condemned Illinois legislators for passingmost of their time at drinking, gambling and bawdy houses.cixLegislatures throughout the West were held in low esteem. One Hoosier declared:When I hear of the assembling of a Legislature in one of these Western States, it remindsme of a cry of fire in a populous city. No one knows when he is safe; no man can tell wherethe ruin will end.cx Judge David Davis, appalled by a particularly dangerous criminalstanding before his bench, absently sentenced the miscreant to seven years in the IllinoisLegislature, where Davis had served one term.cxiDuring the ten-week legislative session in 1834-35, Lincoln, under the tutelage ofJohn Todd Stuart, remained inconspicuous, quietly observing his colleagues grant petitionsfor divorce, pass private bills to relieve individual citizens, appeal to Congress for money,declare creeks navigable, lay bills on the table, and listen to committee reports. Jesse K.Dubois, a Representative from southern Illinois, remembered that Lincoln didnt take muchprominence in the first session of the legislature in 1834. Stuart at that time quiteovershadowed him. Stuart had been there the session before besides he had been practicinglaw, and generally had more experience than Lincoln.cxii On roll calls, Lincoln sided withStuart 101 times and voted against him on 26 occasions. On votes for public officials,

cviii William H. Fithian to Amos Williams, Vandalia, 26 January 1835, Springfield, 2 December 1839,Woodbury Collection, Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in Donald G.Richter, Lincoln: Twenty Years on the Eastern Prairie (Mattoon, Illinois: United Graphics, 1999), 16, 33.cix Chicago Democrat, n.d., quoted in the Illinois State Register (Springfield), 23 April 1841.cx Caton, Early Bench and Bar of Illinois, 231.cxi Etzard Duis, The Good Old Times in McLean County, Illinois (Bloomington: Leader, 1874), 278-79. WhenWard Hill Lamon called the judges attention to his slip, Davis corrected his mistake, substitutingpenitentiary for legislature. Leonard Swett, David Davis: Address before the Bar Association of the Stateof Illinois (pamphlet, n.d.), 8-9.cxii Dubois, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 4 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 30.

320

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Lincoln agreed with Stuart every time save one.cxiii Stuart claimed that in 1834 and 1836 hefrequently traded Lincoln off.cxiv As he laid plans for a congressional race in 1836, Stuartgroomed Lincoln to take over his leadership role in the General Assembly.cxvLincolns first bill sought to limit the jurisdiction of justices of the peace; muchamended, it won approval in the House but not the senate.cxvi Two weeks into the session, heintroduced a measure that did pass, authorizing the construction of a toll bridge over SaltCreek.cxvii Appreciating his literary skill, colleagues pressed him to draft legislation for them;he also wrote reports for the Committee on Public Accounts and Expenditures.cxviiiIn addition, he composed anonymous dispatches about legislative doings for theSangamo Journal, an influential Whig newspaper in Springfield which would over the yearspublish many of his unsigned articles.cxix Lincoln had undisputed use of the columns ofthat paper. William Herndon said, I frequently wrote the editorials in the Springfieldcxiii Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 61-62; Rodney O. Davis, I Shall Consider the Whole People of SangamonMy Constituents: Lincoln and the Illinois General Assembly, in Abraham Lincoln and the Political Process:Papers from the Seventh Annual Lincoln Colloquium (Springfield, 1994), 15.cxiv John T. Stuart, interview with Herndon, [1865-6], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 481.cxv Jesse K. Dubois, interview John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 4 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 30; Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 62.cxvi Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:28.cxvii Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:29-30.cxviii Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1: 27-28, 30-33, 45-46, 30-31.cxix Andy Van Meter, Always My Friend: A History of the State Journal-Register and Springfield (Springfield:Copley Press, 1981), 48-49, 67-68; memo by William Henry Bailhache, San Diego, 14 January 1898, andstatement of Col. J. D. Roper, 22 October 1897, enclosed in J. McCan Davis to Ida M. Tarbell, Springfield, 27November 1897, Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College; Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (2vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 1:183-84; William E. Barton, Abraham Lincoln, Newspaper Man,typescript, and Lincoln Editorials, handwritten memo, Springfield, 28 December 1928, and undatedtypescript of the same title, Barton Papers, University of Chicago; A. W. Shipton, Lincolns Association withthe Journal (pamphlet; Springfield, Illinois: Copley Press, 1945); Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 62; Clyde C.Walton, Abraham Lincoln: Illinois Legislator, in Ralph G. Newman, ed., Lincoln for the Ages (Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 76; Albert J. Beveridge to J. C. Thompson, 5 March 1925, copy, Beveridge Papers,Library of Congress; Pratt, Lincoln in the Legislature, 6; Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1951), 2; Glenn H. Seymour, ConservativeAnother Lincoln Pseudonym? Journal of the

321

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Journal, the editor, Simeon Francis, giving to Lincoln and to me the utmost liberty in thatdirection. Both partners submitted material to the Journal up to 1861.cxx James Matheny,who was to be a groomsman at Lincolns wedding, recalled that when he served as deputypostmaster in Springfield in the mid-1830s, he got to Know Lincolns hand writing as suchP. M He Lincoln used to write Editorials as far back as 1834 or 5 for [Simeon] Francis [editor of] the Sangamon Journal. Matheny took hundreds of such Editorials from Lincolnto the Journal office.cxxiOther Lincoln contemporaries claimed that he wrote for the Journal. The DemocraticIllinois State Register of Springfield charged that the writers of the Journal have had a lateacquisition (Lincoln) a chap rather famous not only for throwing filth, but for swallowing itafterwards.cxxii In 1840, the Register alleged that the author of a Journal article attackingDemocrats is no doubt one of the Junto, whose members deliberate in secret, write in secret,and work in darkness men who dare not let the light of day in upon their acts who seek torule a free people by their edicts passed in midnight secrecy. . . . The mask is on them in alltheir acts.cxxiii This was doubtless an allusion to Lincoln, a leader of the Whig Junto andits most trusted writer. The following year, the Register charged that a member of the Juntohad contributed pseudonymous articles, signed Conservative, to the Journal and had thentried to ascribe the authorship to Jesse B. Thomas: the gang who control the SangamoJournal wrote the articles which appear in that paper over the signature of A Conservative,Illinois State Historical Society 29 (July 1936): 13550; LincolnAuthor of the Letters by a Conservative,Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association no. 50 (December 1937): 89.cxx Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Lincoln, 143, 227-28.cxxi James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, November 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 431.cxxii Van Meter, Always My Friend, 109.

322

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

and privately impressed it upon the minds of the friends of the [Martin Van Buren]administration that the Judge [Thomas] was the author. . . . The Junto resorted to this foulstratagem to render the Judge obnoxious to the friends of Van Buren, hoping that thereby hewould be driven to become a Federalist [i.e., a Whig].cxxivLincolns journalism is not easy to identify with certainty, though dozens of piecesfrom the 1830s seem clearly to be his handiwork, including dispatches from a Whig memberof the legislature.cxxv At first, those dispatches simply offered terse accounts of legislativeactivity; in time they grew longer and more partisan.cxxvi A dispatch dated January 23, 1835,sarcastically referred to Whig legislators as Aristocrats and reported dissension within theDemocratic ranks. Written in Lincolns characteristic bantering, satirical style, it concludedthus: The thing was funny, and we Aristocrats enjoyed it hugely.cxxviiIn the first session of his initial term as a legislator, Lincoln made no formal speechesand only two brief sets of remarks. In one of the latter he humorously commented on thenomination of a surveyor to fill a post that, it turned out, had not been vacated: if . . . therewas no danger of the new surveyors ousting the old one so long as he persisted not to die,Lincoln said he would suggest the propriety of letting matters remain as they were, so that if

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

the old surveyor should hereafter conclude to die, there would be a new one ready madewithout troubling the legislature.cxxviiiEconomic issues dominated the session. The most important bill considered byLincoln and his colleagues dealt with the much-discussed proposal to dig a canal fromChicago to La Salle, connecting the Great Lakes with the Illinois River, which fed into theMississippi.cxxix (When completed in 1848, it helped make Chicago a metropolis.) Lincoln,who wished to be known as the De Witt Clinton of Illinois, voted with the majority tofinance that internal improvement with $500,000 in state bonds.cxxx The most controversialnational issue debated by the legislature involved the Bank of the United States, on whichPresident Andrew Jackson had declared well-publicized war. Another was the distribution offunds generated by the sale of federal public lands. Lincoln introduced an unsuccessfulresolution calling for the U.S. government to remit to the state at least one fifth of suchproceeds collected in Illinois.cxxxi In fulfillment of his pledge to Hugh Armstrong and NedPotter, he also submitted a petition of sundry citizens of the counties of Sangamon, Morganand Tazewell, praying the organization of a new county out of said counties. TheCommittee on Petitions reported against it.cxxxiiIn the winter of 1834-35, the General Assembly passed 191 laws, chiefly dealing withroads, corporations, schools, and acts to relieve individuals. A state bank was chartered; the

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

324

Illinois and Michigan canal received vital funding; public roads were encouraged; the statewas divided into judicial districts; and four colleges were incorporated.cxxxiii Lincoln voted on131 of the 139 roll calls and was present for at least 59 of the 65 days when the legislaturemet.cxxxivDuring that session, he had ostensibly achieved little. Stuart recalled that he was theauthor of no special or general act and that he had no organizing power.cxxxv John Mosesreported that he arose in his place and spoke briefly on two or three occasions, withoutgiving any special promise, however, of ability as a debater or speaker. He seemed rather tobe feeling his way, and taking the measure of the rising men around him.cxxxvi He didvirtually nothing to implement the three main proposals of his 1832 platform: expandingpublic education, improving navigation of the Sangamon, and curbing high interest rates.Usher F. Linder said that if he won any fame at that session I have never heard of it. In1835, upon meeting Lincoln for the first time, Linder found him very modest and retiring,good-natured, easy, unambitious, of plain good sense, and unobtrusive in his manners,resembling a quiet, unassuming farmer.cxxxviiNot every observer agreed with Stuart, Moses, and Linder about Lincolns debut as alegislator. Jesse K. Dubois recalled that before the session ended, Lincoln was already a

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

prominent man.cxxxviii John Locke Scripps asserted in an 1860 campaign biography thatLincoln was faithful in his attendance, watchful of the interests of his constituents, acquiredthe confidence of his fellow-members as a man of sound judgment and patriotic purposes,and in this manner he wielded a greater influence in shaping and controlling legislation thanmany of the noisy declaimers and most frequent speakers of the body.cxxxixIf Lincoln achieved little renown, he learned a great deal: he had met legislators,lobbyists, judges, and attorneys from around the state; had observed a more civilized culturethan he had known along Little Pigeon Creek or in New Salem; had paid heed to the shrewdadvice of John Todd Stuart; and had seen first-hand how legislation was framed and passed.In addition, he had made friends, partly through his legendary skill at story-telling. John H.Bryant recalled hearing him tell many stories during the winter of 1836-37: there was agreat deal that was funny, and some things that were instructive, and some pathetic.cxlThose ten weeks in Vandalia sharpened Lincolns already keen desire to escape thebackwoods world of his father. He wanted to belong to this new realm, peopled withambitious and talented men, and so he returned to New Salem resolved not only to continuestudying law but also to smooth some of his rough edges. Abner Y. Ellis thought thatLincoln improved rapidly in Mind & Manners after his return from Vandalia his firstSession in the Legislature.cxli

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

326

ROMANCE

In Illinois, as in Indiana, the bashful Lincoln paid little attention to young women.cxlii (Inmiddle age, he admitted that women are the only things that cannot hurt me that I am afraidof.)cxliii When he boarded with John M. Camron, he took no romantic interest in his hostsattractive daughters.cxliv One of them described him as thin as a beanpole and as ugly as ascarecrow!cxlv Between 1831 and 1834, when Daniel Burner and Lincoln both lived in NewSalem, Burner never observed him with a girl. Because he could not sing any more than acrow, Lincoln avoided the singing school, where on weekends young men and womenreceived elementary musical instruction and also courted.cxlvi According to HannahArmstrong, his New Salem contemporaries thought him kind of queer. When there was a

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

frolic, or any doings among them, he would always go, but never danced or cut up.cxlviiJason Duncan, who left New Salem in 1833, recalled that Lincoln was verry reservedtoward the opposite sex. Duncan could not recollect of his ever paying his addresses to anyyoung lady.cxlviii James Short said that Lincoln didnt go to see the girls much, for hecared but little for them, and when he craved companionship, he would just as lieve thecompany were all men as to have it a mixture of the sexes.cxlix At Abner Y. Elliss store,where Lincoln sometimes clerked, he was a Verry shy Man of Ladies, and disliked waitingon them. Even at mealtime, Lincoln avoided women. Ellis reported that one day while weboarded at this Tavern there came a family containing an old Lady her Son and Three stilishDaughters from the State of Virginia and stoped their for 2 or 3 weeks and during theer stay Ido not remember of Mr Lincoln ever eating at the Same table when they did.cl A New Salemmaiden said that in his mid-twenties, the homely, very awkward Lincoln was a very queerfellow and very bashful.cli Robert Boal of Lacon, Illinois, testified that Lincoln was not aladies man . . . . he did not court their society.clii Frances Todd Wallace stated that Lincoln

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

328

did not go much [with girls], as some of the other young men did.cliii One historianspeculated that it was greatly to Lincolns advantage that he was not a favorite with societywomen. If he had been, most of his time and energies would have been wasted in agreeablefrivolity.clivWomen who claimed that Lincoln was drawn to them also testified that he was sociallybackward and not a particularly eligible bachelor. Martinette Hardin said he was soawkward that I was always sorry for him. He did not seem to know what to say in thecompany of women.clv Polly Warnick, whom Lincoln allegedly tried to woo in MaconCounty, Illinois, had little interest in a tall gangly youth with an Indiana accent.clvi A NewSalem woman remembered that Lincoln was not much of a beau, and seemed to prefer thecompany of the elderly ladies to the young ones.clviiThose more mature women (in effect surrogate mothers) included Mrs. Bennett Abell,who encouraged Lincolns ambition. William Butler deemed her a cultivated woman verysuperior to the common run of women about here. Able, who was from Kentucky, hadmarried her rich, and had got broken down there, and in consequence had come out here.cliii Chicago Times Herald, 25 August 1895.cliv William E. Connelley, p. 3 of a commentary on chapter six of the first volume of Albert J. Beveridgesbiography of Lincoln, memo enclosed in Connelley to Beveridge, [Topeka, Kansas], 7 December 1925, copy,Beveridge Papers, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield.clv Interview with Mrs. Alexander R. McKee (ne Martinette Hardin), Marietta Holdstock Brown, ARomance of Lincoln, clipping identified as Indianapolis, January 1896, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne,Indiana.clvi Art Wells, Incident Shaped Lincolns Future, unidentified clipping, Childhood and Youth Illinoisfolder, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Wellss source was Florence Scott White, great-great-greatgranddaughter of Major Warnick. See also Charles Hanks to the editor of the Decatur, Illinois, Magnet, [ca.July 1860], copied in the Fulton County Ledger (Canton, Illinois), 31 July 1860; reminiscences of sheriffWarnicks son, Robert Warnick, unidentified clipping, reproducing an undated article from the St. LouisGlobe-Democrat, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana.clvii A Mrs. Rule, of Tallula, Illinois, quoted in George A. Pierces dispatch dated on the cars, 15 April,Chicago Inter-Ocean, 16 April 1881. Mrs. Rule was perhaps Mary J. Godbey, who married H. K. Rule in

329

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

While boarding at Bowling Greens house, Lincoln came to know the Abells, who livedclose by. Mrs. Abell evidently liked Lincoln, his genial manner and disposition to makehimself agreeable. In time Lincoln boarded with Mrs. Able she washed for him and hegenerally lived there in a sort of home intimacy. Butler thought it was from Mrs. Able hefirst got his ideas of a higher plane of life that it was she who gave him the notion that hemight improve himself by reading &c.clviiiLike Elizabeth Abell, Mary Spears another surrogate mother was a woman ofuncommon intelligence. Lincoln used to talk to her instead of talking to Men and said thatif she had an Education she would have been Equal to any woman. She, in turn, remarkedthat there was a great promise a great possibility in Lincoln.clix Lincoln called his firstlandlady in New Salem, Mrs. John M. Camron, Aunt Polly and often referred to her inafter years with great affection.clx She was, according to Charles Maltby, an excellentwoman whose hallowed influences reached out beyond the family circle, and her motherlykindness and counsels to Lincoln reminded him of the advice and instructions of a deardeparted mother.clxi Hannah Armstrong, yet another surrogate mother, recalled that heamused himself by playing with the children, or telling some funny story to the old

1859. She may well have heard stories about Lincoln from her parents, Russell and Elizabeth Godbey, whoresided in New Salem when Lincoln was there.clviii William Butler, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 13 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral Historyof Lincoln, 19; Elizabeth Abell to Herndon, 15 February 1867, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,557. He boarded there when surveying in the fall of 1833.clix John Q. Spears, grandson of Mary Spears, undated interview with Herndon, Wilson and Davis, eds.,Herndons Informants, 705.clx Undated statement by Martha C. Camron, daughter of John M. Camron, in Drake, Flame o Dawn, 209.clxi Maltby, Lincoln, 27-28.

330

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

folks.clxii Lincoln also liked to converse with Sarah Graham, the wife of Mentor Graham,often soliciting her advice about personal matters, including love.clxiiiRomantic love entered Lincolns life in the person of Ann Rutledge, the daughter ofone of his early New Salem landlords, James Rutledge.clxiv Four years younger than Lincoln,she was, by all accounts, attractive, intelligent, and lovable. Her neighbors and familydescribed her as a woman of Exquisite beauty, with a very fair complexion, auburnhair, face rather round, Mouth well Made beautiful, good teeth, expressive, ratherlarge blue eyes with a great deal in them, and a form well rounded. She stood about fivefeet three inches tall, weighed approximately 120 pounds, and dressed plainly, butExceedingly neat. Studious, ambitious to learn, with an intellect quick and Sharp,and possessing the brightest mind of her family, she was a tolerably good Schollar in allthe Common branchs including grammar, a good conversationalist, and had a moderateeducation. Seldom seen when not engaged in some occupation knitting, sewing, waitingclxii Havana, Illinois, correspondence, 14 December 1865, Chicago Republican, n.d., copied in the BellevilleAdvocate, 5 January 1866.clxiii Mrs. Grahams daughter, Elizabeth Herndon Bell, interview with Herndon, [March 1887], Wilson andDavis, eds., Herndons Informants, 606.clxiv Thanks to Ruth Painter Randall, wife of Lincoln scholar James G. Randall, the story of Lincolns love forAnn Rutledge was long thought a myth. Mrs. Randall, a biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln, deplored theshabby manner in which the image of Ann [Rutledge] has tended to obscure the years of Lincolns love anddevotion to Mary, his wife, and to belittle her love and devotion for him. Sifting the Ann RutledgeEvidence, in J. G. Randall, Lincoln the President (2 vols.; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945), 2:342. This curiousappendix to Randalls study of Lincolns presidency was primarily the handiwork of his wife, who wanted toinclude it in the main text. (In fact, it formed an early chapter in the original manuscript, now at LincolnMemorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee.) She undertook the project at the suggestion of her husband. RuthPainter Randall, I, Ruth: Autobiography of a Marriage (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), 165. J. G. Randall told afriend that his wife helped me handsomely with the Ann Rutledge chapter. It is very largely her work.Randall to Francis S. Ronalds, n.p., 3 February 1945, copy, Randall Papers, Library of Congress. In 1990, JohnY. Simon showed that Mrs. Randall had badly misread the evidence. Later that year, Douglas L. Wilson, coeditor of William H. Herndons interviews and correspondence about Lincoln, corroborated Simons findings.John Y. Simon, Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 11 (1990):13-33; Douglas L. Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, and the Evidence of Herndons Informants,Civil War History 36 (1990): 301-23. Three years later their interpretations were fleshed out in John Evangelist

331

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

on table, etc., she was known as a good house keeper, industrious, very housewifelyand domestic. Her amiable and lovable disposition and sweet and beautiful character full of love, kindness, sympathy, sweet & angelic, kind and cheerful, gentle,tender, and good hearted made her beloved by ev[e]ry body. She was modest,winsome and comely, and without any of the airs of your City Belles.clxv Her mothersaid she had been noted for three things, her skill with the needle, being a good spinner anda fine cook.clxvi Her cousin James McGrady Rutledge called her a girl whose companypeople liked . . . . seeming to enjoy life, and helping others enjoy it.clxvii In the opinion ofWilliam G. Greene, her Character was more than good: it was positively noted throughoutthe County. She was a woman worthy of Lincolns love & she was most worthy of his.clxviii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Lincoln described Ann as a handsome girl, natural and quite intellectual, thoughnot highly educated, who would have made a good loving wife.clxix He may have beensmitten with her when boarding at her fathers tavern in 1831, but she was then unavailable,having become engaged to the successful merchant John McNamar (who used the aliasMcNeil), a partner of Samuel Hill. The women of New Salem considered McNamar thecatch of the village, for he had accumulated between $10,000 and $12,000 by the time hebegan courting Ann.clxx But Anns father had no use for him from the beginning, perhapsbecause he was ordinary looking, twelve years Anns senior, and cold. (In 1836, McNamarevicted Anns widowed mother from her home when she fell behind in the rent.clxxi AfterMcNamars death, his widow recollected that in all the years of their married life, though hewas courteous and attentive and a good provider, there was no more poetry or sentiment inhim than in the multiplication table, and that she really never became acquainted withhim.)clxxii Around the time that Lincoln returned from the Black Hawk War, McNamar leftNew Salem to fetch his family from New York; he did not come back for three years. Duringthat period he wrote to Ann so seldom that she believed he had cancelled their

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

engagement.clxxiii (According to his son, McNamar bought a farm in New Salem for hisparents, but shortly after he reached their New York home, his father took sick and died.Then he too became ill and was bedridden for a long while.)clxxivMeanwhile Ann had moved with her family to Sandridge, a few miles from NewSalem.clxxv Lincoln began to court her, visiting Sandridge several times a week.clxxvi Fewdetails of that courtship survive. Parthena Nance Hill recalled that when McNamar stoppedwriting to his fiance, some of the girls lorded it over Ann who sat at home alone while weother young people walked and visited. Lincoln, who thought highly of Ann and felt sorryfor her, began escorting her on evening walks.clxxvii Mrs. Hill told a friend that Lincoln wasdeeply in love with Ann.clxxviii When visiting her family, Lincoln would cheerfully, ifawkwardly, help Ann with household chores. They also studied together, poring over a copyof Kirkhams Grammar which he had given her. In addition, they sang songs from ananthology called The Missouri Harmony.clxxix Eventually, according to Anns sister Nancy,

clxxiii McNamars silence may have resulted from his fear that he would have to assume financialresponsibility not only for his own family in New York but also for the Rutledges, who were in dire financialstraits. William E. Barton to Ida M. Tarbell, Foxboro, Massachusetts, 10 July 1926, Tarbell Papers, AlleghenyCollege.clxxiv Andrew McNamar to Oliver Barrett, Cottonwood, California, 17 October 1922, Sandburg-BarrettPapers, Newberry Library, Chicago.clxxv Interview with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt, conducted by Margaret Flindt, Fairfield, Iowa, correspondence,10 February, Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12 February 1899. Nancy Rutledge was fourteen when Ann died in 1835.clxxvi James Short to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 7 July 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 73.clxxvii Nance, A Piece of Time, 26. According to William Herndon, Women are peculiar animals: they love tonettle & mortify one another: they love to see one another fall, like Ann. Herndon, memo on Miss Rutledge& Lincoln, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress. Mrs. Hill, who married in the month before Annsdeath in 1835, was a close friend of Anns, according to Mrs. Josephine Chandler, who spoke with Mrs. Hilloften. Interview with Mrs. Chandler by Malvina Lindsay, Washington Post, 7 July 1937.clxxviii Interview with Mrs. Josephine Chandler by Malvina Lindsay, Washington Post, 7 July 1937. As anadolescent, Mrs. Chandler spoke with Mrs. Hill about Ann Rutledge and Lincoln.clxxix Interview with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt, conducted by E. E. Sparks, Los Angeles Times, 14 February1897. Anns sister, Sarah Rutledge Saunders, basing her testimony on what her mother told her, reported thatLincolns attention to Ann was given chiefly around the family fireside and there was never a word or act that

334

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

he declared his love and was accepted for she loved him with a more mature and enduringaffection than she had ever felt for McNamar. No one could have seen them together and notbe convinced that they loved each other truly. In early 1835, they evidently becameengaged, but, as Nancy reported, they decided to wait a year, for Annie wanted to go toschool a while longer, and tho Mr Lincoln was beginning to have high aspirations, he wasvery poor, and both wished to better equip themselves for the position they would eventuallyoccupy.clxxx (In July 1835, Anns brother David, a student at Illinois College in Jacksonville,wrote to her saying, I am glad to hear that you have a notion of comeing to school and Iearnestly recommend to you that you would spare no time from improving your educationand mind.)clxxxi Ann consented to wait a year before wedding; during that time Lincolnwould prepare to enter the bar.clxxxii She also wanted to postpone marriage until she couldhonorably break her engagement to McNamar.clxxxiii While awaiting McNamars return, Annbecame sick, probably with typhoid fever, and died on August 25, 1835, after an illness of afew weeks.

bore the least tinge of simpering sentimentalism but the family were pleased with his honest and honorablerelations. Sarah Rutledge Saunders to Mrs. Bernice Babcock, n.p., n.d., quoted in Mrs. Babcock to William E.Barton, Little Rock, Arkansas, 29 July 1926, Barton Papers, University of Chicago.clxxx Interview with Nancy Rutledge Prewitt, conducted by Margaret Flindt, Fairfield, Iowa, correspondence,10 February, Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12 February 1899. See also William E. Barton, Abraham Lincoln and NewSalem, Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society 33 (1926): 119-21. One source alleged that hercopy of Kirkhams Grammar was given to her by her father, who had ordered it from St. Louis. AbrahamLincoln, Illinois Womans Columbian Club of Menard County, Menard, Salem, Lincoln Souvenir Album,unpaginated.clxxxi D. H. Rutlege to Anna Rutledge, College Hill, 27 July 1835, photostatic copy, Lincoln MiscellaneousCollection, University of Chicago. This letter casts some doubt on the contention that David urged Ann tomarry Lincoln without awaiting the return of her whilom fianc. Robert B. Rutledge to Herndon, [ca. 1November 1866], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 383.clxxxii Statement of James M. Rutledge, [March 1887], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 608.clxxxiii Robert B. Rutledge to Herndon, [ca. 1 November 1866], Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 383.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

335

Mary Harriet Spears, sister of Lincolns business partner William Berry, recalled thatOne evening shortly before her death a terrible storm was raging. Someone at our gatecalled, Hello!Father went to the door, and looking out into the gathering darkness and rain, said:Is that you, Abe?Yes, answered Lincoln.Come in out of the storm.No, Im on my way to see Ann. Have you heard whether she is better?We have not heard, but you cannot go on in this storm. Bring your saddlebags inand stop till morning. Finally he was prevailed upon to stay. However, he did not go to bed,but walked the floor all night, and very early in the morning, the storm having subsided, hestarted on his way.clxxxivAccording to her sister Sarah, Ann had brain fever and was out of [her] head all thetime till about two days before she died, when she came to herself and called for Abe.Bowling Green fetched Lincoln. When he arrived, everybody left the room and they talkedtogether. Emerging from that room, Lincoln stopped at the door and looked back. Both ofthem were crying.clxxxv Dr. John Allen, who had been attending Ann, took the distraughtLincoln to his house for the night.clxxxvi

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

A grief-stricken Lincoln became plunged in despair, and many of his friends fearedthat reason would desert her throne.clxxxvii John M. Camrons daughter Vienna rememberedwell the love of Lincoln for Ann, whose death was a severe blow to the young man.clxxxviiiHenry McHenry recollected that after that Event he seemed quite changed, he seemedRetired, & loved Solitude, he seemed wrap[p]ed in profound thought, indifferent, totranspiring Events, had but Little to say, but would take his gun and wander off in the woodsby him self, away from the association of even those he most esteemed, this depressionseemed to deepen for some time, so as to give anxiety to his friends in regard to hisMind.clxxxix William G. Greene testified that after this sudden death of one whom his soul& heart dearly & lov[e]d, Lincolns friends were Compelled to keep watch and ward overMr Lincoln, for he was from the sudden shock somewhat temporarily deranged. Wewatched during storms fogs damp gloomy weather Mr Lincoln for fear of an accident. Hesaid I can never be reconciled to have the snow rains & storms to beat on her grave.cxcGreene reported that this depression did not pass quickly: Long after Anne died, Abe and ILos Angeles Times, 14 February 1897. Sarah Rutledge Saunders, who was a child of six when her sister Anndied, based her account on what she heard from her mother and from her sister, Nancy Prewitt. See also theRev. Mr. Anthony M. Prewitt (son of Nancy Rutledge Prewitt) to Jane E. Hamand, Chowchilla, California, 7November 1921, in Jane E. Hamand, comp., Memories of the Rutledge Family of New Salem, Illinois,typescript dated November 1921, pp. 18-19, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield; and Honora DeBuckSmith to William E. Barton, Long Beach, California, 9 January 1921, Barton Scrapbooks, University ofChicago, describing Sarah Rutledge Saunders memories of Lincoln and Ann.clxxxvi Miranda Allen, a daughter or granddaughter of Dr. Allen, told this story to the mother of SadieCaropresi. Sadie Caropresi to Cullom Davis, Dallas, Texas, 29 August 1994, copy in possession of the author. Iam grateful to Cullom Davis for sharing this document with me. Cf. Walsh, Shadows Rise, 136. Thomas Reepasserted that Dr. Allen ministered to Lincoln during the time following Ann Rutledges death. Reep, Lincolnat New Salem, 84.clxxxvii Robert B. Rutledge to Herndon, [ca. 1 November 1866], Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 383.clxxxviii Undated newspaper story, ca. 30 December 1905, in Drake, Flame o Dawn, 208.clxxxix Henry McHenry to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 8 January 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 155-56.

337

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

would be alone perhaps in the grocery on a rainy night, and Abe would sit there, his elbowson his knees, his face in his hands, the tears dropping through his fingers.cxciOne of Lincolns surrogate mothers, Elizabeth Abell, was impressed by the depth ofLincolns grief. She recalled that he was staying with us at the time of her death, whichwas a great shock to him and I never seen a man mourn for a companion more than he didfor her. The community said he was crazy but he was not crazy, though he was verydisponding a long time.cxcii Another surrogate mother, Hannah Armstrong, saw Lincolnweep like a baby over the death of Ann Rutledge.cxciii Yet another surrogate mother, NancyGreen, recollected that Lincoln took Anns death verry hard so much so that some thoughthis mind would become impa[i]red. She reported that her husband, Bowling Green, was soafraid that Lincoln would lose his reason that he went to Salem after Lincoln brought him tohis house and kept him a week or two & succeeded in cheering him Lincoln up though hewas quite molencoly for months.cxciv At Greens, he was visited often by Dr. Allen.cxcv

cxc William G. Greene, interview with Herndon, Elm Wood, Illinois, 30 May 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds.,Herndons Informants, 21.cxci Greene in an 1887 interview, Paul Hull, Another Lincoln Tale, New York Mail and Express, 15February 1896, p. 16. In that same article, Hull reported that Aunt Sally Mullins, two years younger thanLincoln, who knew him during all his life in [New] Salem, told me that he went plumb crazy after Annesdeath. Abe lowed he thought a mighty sight of Anne, said Aunt Sallie. He took on awful when she died, andwent plumb crazy. Why, many a time when Ive been goin to mill or grocery in Salem Ive met Abe wanderinaroun in the woods, tryin to git the hypo off him.cxcii Elizabeth Abell to Herndon, n.p., 15 February 1867, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 55657. See also John Hill to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 6 June 1865, ibid., 23.cxciii Eliza Armstrong Smith, daughter of Hannah Armstrong, Springfield correspondence, 9 September,Lerna, Illinois, Eagle, 19 September 1930.cxciv George U. Miles to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 23 March 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 236. Miles reported that both Mrs. William Rutledge and Mrs. Parthena Hill corroborated Mrs.Greens version of events. According to Ward Hill Lamons biography of Lincoln, when Green came for him,Lincoln was at first reluctant, and it required the most artful practices of a general conspiracy of all his friendsto disarm his suspicions, and induce him to go and stay with his most anxious and devoted friend. Lamon,Lincoln, 164.cxcv Reep, Lincoln at New Salem, 109.

338

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

In despair, Lincoln thought of killing himself. According to John Hill, Lincoln was sofearfully wrought up upon her death that Samuel Hill had to lock him up and keep guardover him for some two weeks . . . for fear he might Commit Suicide. The whole villageengaged in trying to quiet him and reconcile him to the loss. Hill recollected that for ashort time his mind wandered.cxcvi The family of Jack Armstrong feared Lincoln would gocrazy.cxcvii Henry Sears and his wife remembered that Lincoln took Anns death awfulhard, so much so that he strolled around the neighborhood for the next three or four weekshumming sad songs and writing them with chalk on fences and barns. It was generally fearedthat the death of Ann Rutledge would drive him insane.cxcviiiThis was evidently not the only time Lincoln considered suicide. He told MentorGraham that he felt like Committing Suicide often.cxcix To Robert L. Wilson, he confidedthat although he appeared to enjoy life rapturously, Still he was the victim of terriblemelancholly. He Sought company, and indulged in fun and hilarity without restraint. Yet,when by himself, he told me that he was so overcome with mental depression, that he never

cxcvi John Hill to Ida M. Tarbell, Columbus, Georgia, 6 and 17 February 1896, Tarbell Papers, AlleghenyCollege. See also John Hills article, A Romance of Reality, Petersburg, Illinois, Menard Axis, 15 February1862, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 25, and Hardin Bales interview with Herndon,Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, ibid., 13.cxcvii Eliza Armstrong Smith, daughter of Hannah Armstrong, Springfield correspondence, 9 September,Lerna, Illinois, Eagle, 19 September 1930.cxcviii Stories of Lincoln: Reminiscences Missed by His Biographers Gathered in the Old Salem Region,unidentified clipping, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1822, Henry Sears migrated to Illinois,spending most of his time in Sangamon and Menard Counties. In 1834, he settled in Walkers Grove. He was,according to T. G. Onstot, a man of undoubted integrity and honesty. His word was as good as his bond.Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties, 340.cxcix Mentor Graham, interview with Herndon, 2 April 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,243. William H. Herndon reported that Lincoln often thought of committing suicide. William Herndon,Nancy Hanks, notes written in Greencastle, Indiana, ca. 20 August 1887, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library ofCongress.

339

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

dared carry a knife in his pocket.cc In 1838, an unsigned poem about suicide, perhaps byLincoln, appeared in the newspaper for which he regularly wrote anonymous pieces.cci

cc Robert L. Wilson to Herndon, Sterling, Illinois, 10 February 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 205.cci On August 15, 1838, the Sangamo Journal ran the following anonymous item: THE SUICIDESSOLILOQUY. The following lines were said to have been found near the bones of a man supposed to havecommitted suicide, in a deep forest, on the Flat Branch of the Sangamon, sometime ago.Here, where the lonely hooting owlSends forth his midnight moans,Fierce wolves shall oer my carcase growl,Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,

Or where my ashes lie;Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,Or by the ravens cry.

Yes! Ive resolved the deed to do,

And this the place to do it:This heart Ill rush a dagger through,Though I in hell should rue it!

Hell! What is hell to one like me

To ease me of this power to think,

That through my bosom raves,Ill headlong leap from hells high brink,And wallow in its waves.

Though devils yells, and burning chains

May waken long regret;Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,Will help me to forget.

340

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Decades later, when asked by Isaac Cogdal if he ran a little wild after Anns death,Lincoln replied: I did really I run off the track: it was my first. I loved the woman dearly& sacredly: . . . . I did honestly & truly love the girl & think often often of her now.cciiThe depth of Lincolns sorrow, and the severe depression he suffered after her demise, wereprobably a result, at least in part, of his unresolved grief at the death of his mother andsiblings.cciii Anns death unconsciously reminded him of those old wounds, which began tosuppurate once again, causing him to re-experience the bitter agony he had endured as ayouth.cciv Such intense depression can lead to suicide, even among young and physicallyhealthy people like Lincoln.ccv

Yes! Im prepared, through endless night,

To take that fiery berth!Think not with tales of hell to frightMe, who am damnd on earth!

Sweet steel! Come forth from out your sheath,

And glistning, speak your powers;Rip up the organs of my breath,And draw my blood in showers!

I strike! It quivers in that heart

Which drive me to this end;I draw and kiss the bloody dart,My last my only friend!ccii Cogdal, interview with Herndon, [1865-66], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 440.cciii See Robert V. Bruce, The Riddle of Death, in Gabor Boritt, ed., The Lincoln Enigma: The ChangingFaces of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 133.cciv See Burlingame, Inner World of Lincoln, 92-113.ccv Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (New York: Knopf, 1999), 100-15.According to Jamison, the average age of the onset of major depression is approximately twenty-six, which wasLincolns age at the time of Anns death. Twenty per cent of those suffering from major depression attemptsuicide. Ibid., 109-10.

341

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

While recuperating from Anns death, Lincoln neglected his duties at the post office.He often started out for that destination but return without having reached it; instead hewould wander about, absorbed in his thoughts, recognizing no friends or neighbors.ccvi Threeweeks after she died, a New Salem resident complained that the Post Master (Mr. Lincoln)is very careless about leaving his office open & unlocked during the day half the time I goin & get my papers &c without any one being there as was the case yesterday.ccviiYears later, when his friend Joshua F. Speed suffered from depression, Lincolnsuggested an antidote: avoid being idle; I would immediately engage in some business, orgo to make preparations for it.ccviii In the fall of 1835, Lincoln took this cure, throwinghimself into the study of law. The previous summer, he had begun to go at it in goodearnest, but a year later he returned to it in even better earnest. Mentor Graham recalled thathe was studious so much so that he somewhat injured his health and Constitution. TheContinued thought & study of the man Caused with the death of one whom he dearly &sincerely loved, a momentary . . . partial & momentary derangement.ccix Henry McHenrybelieved that Lincoln read so much was so studious took so little physical exercise was so laborious in his studies that he became Emaciated & his best friends were afraid hewould craze himself.ccx Isaac Cogdal told Herndon about the Crazy spell following Annsccvi Reminiscences by unidentified residents of Springfield, gathered by Elliott Danforth in 1901, BrooklynDaily Eagle, 10 February 1901, p. 19.ccvii Mathew Marsh to George M. Marsh, New Salem, 17 September 1835, Lincoln Papers, Addendum 1,Library of Congress. Marsh called Lincoln a very clever fellow & a particular friend of mine. Curiously,William E. Barton and some others have cited this letter to show that Lincoln was not distraught after the deathof Ann Rutledge. Barton, Abraham Lincoln and New Salem (pamphlet reprinted from Transactions of theIllinois State Historical Society 1926), 19; Randall, Lincoln the President, 2:335. See Walsh, The ShadowsRise, 123-24, for a thoughtful discussion of the matter.ccviii Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 13 February 1842, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:269-70.ccix Graham to Herndon, 29 May 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 11.ccx Henry McHenry, interview with Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 29 May 1865, Wilson and Davis, eds.,Herndons Informants, 14.

342

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

death: It is my opinion that if Mr Lincoln was crazy it [was] only technically so and notradically & substantially so. We used to say you were Crazy about Ann Rutledge. He wasthen reading Blackstone read hard day & night terribly hard . . . was terriblymelancholy moody.ccxiBy December, 1835, Lincoln managed to pull himself together enough to attend a specialsession of the legislature, which the governor had called to modify the Illinois and MichiganCanal Act and to reapportion the General Assembly.ccxii During his six-week sojourn inVandalia, he won approval for the incorporation of the Beardstown and Sangamon CanalCompany, which William Herndon called Abes pet.ccxiii Lincoln bought stock in thatcorporation and at a public meeting urged others to do so; he even purchased land on theSangamon a mile from the eastern terminus of the proposed canal, which was never dug.ccxivA Sangamo Journal article by Sangamo (perhaps Lincoln) examined the feasibility of theproject and declared that it must be of immense advantage to the country thro which it willpass, and to the great West generally.ccxvA leading promoter of that enterprise, Francis Arnez, edited the Beardstown Chronicle,whose columns in November 1834 contained a slashing attack on Peter Cartwright, aprominent Methodist minister and Jacksonian politico. Though signed Sam Hill, the piecewas actually written by Lincoln, who sent it to Arnez after the Sangamo Journal had rejectedccxi Cogdal, interview with Herndon [1865-66], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants, 441.ccxii Joseph Duncans message to the General Assembly, 7 December 1835, House Journal, 1835-36, pp. 8-12.For an account of this session, see Miller, Prairie Politician, 48-70.ccxiii William H. Herndon memo, Ward Hill Lamon Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.ccxiv Earl Schenck Miers et al., eds., Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809-1865 (3 vols.; Washington:Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), 1:55 (entry for 27 February 1836); Olivier Fraysse, Lincoln,Land, and Labor, 1809-1860, trans. Sylvia Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 74-75.Enthusiastic letters to the editor (perhaps by Lincoln) extolling the merits and prospects of the canal, appearedin the Sangamo Journal, 13 and 20 February, 5 March 1836.

343

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

it. (Arnez agreed to run it only as a paid advertisement.) The irascible, vindictive Hill, knownas the rich man of the village and the potentate with a peculiar temper so explosivethat he could not drive a carriage team, had been quarreling with the belligerent Cartwright,who lived six miles from New Salem in Pleasant Plains. During an earlier squabble with JackArmstrong, Hill had hired someone to thrash that leader of the Clarys Grove boys.ccxvi Nowhe employed Lincoln to attack Cartwright with a pen rather than fists. Lincoln had no specialfondness for Cartwright, one of the four candidates who had beaten him out for a legislativeseat in 1832. Lincolns inflammatory 1500-word philippic, dated September 7, 1834, accusedCartwright of being a most abondoned hypocrite and concluded that it was hard to tellwhether he is greater fool or knave and that he has but few rivals in either capacity.ccxvii(The attack was clever but unfair, based on a misreading of Cartwrights writings.)ccxviii Thusbegan a pattern of anonymous and pseudonymous journalistic assaults which did Lincolnlittle credit. He was to quit that ugly practice in 1842, when an offended target of his ridiculechallenged him to a duel.Lincoln participated actively in the special session of the legislature that winter. OnDecember 12, he introduced a bill for the relief of insolvent debtors, which passed theHouse but not the Senate.ccxix He consistently voted in favor of the Illinois and Michigancanal, whose supporters finally prevailed on Christmas eve, when the House by a 29-26ccxv Sangamo Journal, 23 June 1838.ccxvi A. G. Nance to Henry B. Rankin, n.p., 24 October 1914, Rankin Papers, Lincoln Presidential Library,Springfield; reminiscences of John Watkins, paraphrased by Thomas P. Reep, based on interview conducted byReep in 1890, in Reeps interview with Joseph F. Booton, Petersburg, Illinois, 18 October 1934, typescript, pp.39-40, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield.ccxvii Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1997), 63, 66; Robert Bray, Peter Cartwright: Legendary Frontier Preacher(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 143-52.ccxviii Bray, Cartwright, 149-50.

344

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

margin authorized the establishment of a Board of Commissioners, empowered it to build the

canal, and permitted the governor to borrow up to half a million dollars to fund the effort.The struggle over the canal pitted northern Illinois against the southern part of thestate.ccxx Governor Thomas Ford explained that the former had been settled by wealthyfarmers, enterprising merchants, millers, and manufacturers who built mills, churches,school-houses, towns, and cities and made roads and bridges as if by magic. SouthernIllinois, on the other hand, attracted those who were unambitious of wealth and great loversof ease and social enjoyment and who entertained a most despicable opinion of theirnorthern neighbors as close, miserly, dishonest, selfish getter[s] of money, void ofgenerosity, hospitality, or any of the kindlier feelings of human nature. By the same token,inhabitants of northern Illinois regarded their neighbors to the south as long, lank, lean,lazy, and ignorant, only a little in advance of the savage state, happy to squat in a logcabin with a large family of ill-fed and ill-clothed, ignorant children. The legislators fromsouthern Illinois opposed the canal for fear it would open a way for flooding the State withYankees.ccxxi (Lincoln enjoyed quoting a hard-shell Baptist preacher in southern Illinoiswho declared that the mercy of God reaches from the Esquimaux of the frozen North to the

ccxix Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:41.

ccxx Moses, Illinois, 1:391; Krenkel, Illinois Internal Improvements, 37-38.ccxxi Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 194, 195. See also James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1998), 246-64; Richard Lyle Power, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of theUpland Southerner and Yankee in the Old Northwest (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1953); John D.Barnhart, The Southern Influence in the Formation of Illinois, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society32 (1939): 358-78; and Theodore Calvin Pease, The Frontier State, 1818-1848 (vol. 2 of The CentennialHistory of Illinois, ed. Clarence Walworth Alvord; Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1918), 6-18. Asimilar pattern marked the politics of neighboring Indiana, where, as a Whig leader put it, the enterprisingYankee of Northern Indiana, despises the sluggish and inaminate North Carolinian, Virginian, and Kentuckianin the Southern part of the State, while the latter in return, regarding the patriarchal institution [i.e., slavery] asthe direct gift of God to man, looks upon the freeman who toils with his own hands and proclaims a belief inthe patriotic sentiments of his fathers, as a fanatic and a fool. Godlove S. Orth to Schuyler Colfax, Lafayette,16 August 1845, in J. Herman Schauinger, ed., The Letters of Godlove S. Orth, Hoosier Whig, IndianaMagazine of History 39 (1943): 367.

345

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Hottentot of the sizzling South; from the wandering Arab of Asia to the Injuns of theWestern plains; there are some who say that it even extends to the Yankees, but I wouldntgo scarcely that far.)ccxxiiProponents of the canal bill overcame formidable obstacles. The difficulty ofpersuading a purely agricultural people, scarcely any of whose products would sell formoney at any price, most of whom were emigrants from the South, whose only markets wereon the rivers flowing in that direction, to embark on such an expensive undertaking as theconstruction of a canal ninety miles long, from such an obscure and uninviting place, was atask which few men could have successfully accomplished.ccxxiii A leading champion of thecanal, Gurdon Hubbard, doubted that the legislation could have been approved so quicklywithout Lincolns valuable help.ccxxivDuring the debates over reapportionment of the General Assembly, Lincoln supporteda plan that would have kept the legislature relatively small. When that proposal failed, theGeneral Assembly was expanded from fifty-five to ninety-one members. Under the newarrangement, Sangamon County had seven seats rather than four, constituting the largestdelegation in the House of Representatives.Fortunately for his political career, Lincoln had the prescience to oppose a seeminglyminor bill to improve the breed of cattle, which stipulated that no bull over one year oldshall be permitted to run at large out of an enclosure. Violators would be fined and the

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

proceeds distributed to the farmers with the three best cows, bulls, and heifers within thecounty. In the Jacksonian Era of the Common Man, the public regarded this statute ashopelessly elitist and voted its supporters out of office. Less than a year later the GeneralAssembly overwhelmingly repealed the Little Bull law.ccxxvDuring the 1835-36 special session of the General Assembly, Lincoln answered allbut 11 of the 130 roll calls. He spent three days writing the report of the Committee onPublic Accounts and Expenditures.ccxxvi By supporting the state bank and the canal, heremained true to his Whig principles. His most important contribution was the steadfastencouragement he gave to the Illinois and Michigan canal, which was begun in 1836 andcompleted twelve years later.

SOPHOMORE LEGISLATOR

In June 1836, two months after the Ninth General Assembly adjourned, Lincolnannounced his candidacy for reelection in a campaign statement far more breezy and succinctthan the one he had issued four years earlier. He began by paying obeisance to the regnantegalitarianism of the day: I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist inbearing its burthens. But to that platitudinous opening he added a startling pendant:Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or beararms, (by no means excluding females.)ccxxvii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

347

At that time, the exclusion of blacks from the franchise was hardly controversial inIllinois, a state full of southerners devoted to white supremacy. Indeed, hostility to blackvoting prevailed throughout the Old Northwest.ccxxviii The Illinois constitution of 1818limited voting rights to white male inhabitants at least twenty-one years of age.Membership in the militia was open to free male ablebodied persons, negroes, mulattoes,and Indians excepted. Between 1819 and 1846, the General Assembly outlawed interracialmarriage and cohabitation, forbade blacks to testify in court against whites, and denied themthe right to attend public schools.ccxxix In 1848, by a margin of 60,585 to 15,903 (79% to21%), the Illinois electorate adopted a new constitution banning black suffrage; it votedseparately on an article prohibiting black immigration, which passed 50,261 to 21,297 (70%to 30%). Thus Illinois became the only free state forbidding blacks to settle within itsborders.ccxxx (In the following decade Oregon and Indiana followed the lead of the PrairieState.)ccxxxi

ccxxviii Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the SlaveryExtension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 30-59. Between 1849 and 1857, blacksuffrage was rejected by voters in Michigan (by 72%), in Iowa (by 86%), and in Wisconsin (by 61%). See alsoHenry Clyde Hubbart, Pro-Southern Influence in the Free West, 1840-1865, Mississippi Valley HistoricalReview 20 (1933): 45-62.ccxxix Charles Zucker, The Free Negro Question: Race Relations in Ante BellumIllinois, 1801-1860 (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1973), 157-66; MasonMcCloud Fishback, Illinois Legislation on Slavery and Free Negroes, 1818-1865,Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society 9 (1904): 414-34. Other states had similar laws. See Leon F.Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1961), passim, and Charles H. Wesley, Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787-1865,Journal of Negro History 32 (1947): 143-69. In 1862 Illinois voters rejected black suffrage by more than a fiveto-one margin. V. Jacque Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro during the Civil War(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 27.ccxxx The legislature did not pass an act enforcing the ban until 1853, when it adopted undoubtedly the mostsevere anti-Negro measure passed by a free state. Berwanger, Frontier Against Slavery, 49. In 1862, by amargin of more than two-to-one, the voters of Illinois once again endorsed a prohibition on black immigration.Voegeli, Free but Not Equal, 17.ccxxxi Berwanger, Frontier Against Slavery, 44-47, 80-83.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

348

Sangamon County was more Negrophobic than the Illinois average (90% of its votersopposed the new constitution and 78% opposed black immigration.)ccxxxii Of theSpringfielders voting on black immigration, 84% supported the ban, including one third ofthose who voted for the Free Soil ticket in 1848.ccxxxiii A southern Illinoisan observed thathis neighbors born in slaveholding states brought with them many of the prejudices theyimbibed in infancy, and still hold negroes in the utmost contempt; not allowing them to be ofthe same species of themselves, but look on negers, as they call them, and Indians, as aninferior race of beings, and treat them as such.ccxxxiv (Elsewhere in the nationanthropologists like Samuel George Morton, John Bachman and Louis Agassiz argued thatblacks constituted the lowest grade of humanity, an inferior variety of ourspecies.)ccxxxvLincolns suggestion that women be enfranchised, however, was hardly a campaignclich. His proto-feminist endorsement of womens suffrage may have been inspired byparticipation in debating and literary societies which addressed that question. At a meeting ofsuch an organization in Springfield, he contributed some verses about the sexual doublestandard:Whatever spiteful fools may say,Each jealous ranting yelper,No woman ever went astray

ccxxxii Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 173-81.

ccxxxiii Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Dallas: Taylor, 2001), 261.ccxxxiv John Woods, Two Years Residence on the English Prairie of Illinois, ed. Paul M. Angle (1822;Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1968), 175.ccxxxv Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press,1997), 58-63.

349

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Without a man to help her.ccxxxvi

According to William Herndon, Lincolns idea was that a woman had the same right to playwith her tail that a man had and no more nor less and that he had no moral or other right toviolate the sacred marriage vow.ccxxxviiLincolns support for womens suffrage and his opposition to sexual double standardsreflected his sense of fair play, the bedrock of his political philosophy.ccxxxviii In later years,he would never publicly raise the issue of votes for women, but he would speak and act inways that prefigured the feminist sensibility of generations then unborn. In the late 1850s, hetold a youthful female suffragist: I believe you will vote, my young friend, before you aremuch older than I.ccxxxix He often predicted to Herndon that that question [womens

ccxxxvi James Matheny, a friend of Lincoln and a member of the literary society, told this to Jesse W. Weik.Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 70. In one of Lincolns favorite joke books, there appears a similar bit ofdoggerel: If poor weak women chance to go astray,/ Their . . . are more in fault than they. Quins Jests: or,The Facetious Mans Pocket Companion (London: S. Bladon, 1766), 9.ccxxxvii Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 23 January 1890, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress.Cf. Herndon to James H. Wilson, n.p., 23 September 1889, copy of excerpt, and Herndon to Weik, Springfield,23 July 1890, ibid.ccxxxviii Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 11 February 1887, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library ofCongress. David Herbert Donald interprets Lincolns endorsement of womens suffrage as a joke, arguing thateverybody knew that under Illinois law women neither paid taxes (husbands or guardians paid them forwomen who owned property) nor served in the militia. Donald ignores Lincolns later manifestations of protofeminism. Donald, Lincoln, 59. John Mack Faragher makes a similar point. But Faragher also notes thatwidows paid taxes. In a community near Springfield, women comprised 7% of the taxpayers. Illinois lawallowed widows, divorcees, and spinsters to buy, sell, and manage property, upon which they were taxed.Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 105-9; StacyPratt McDermott, Women, Business, and the Law: The Story of Henrietta Ulrich, Lincoln and HisContemporaries: Papers from the Fourteenth Annual Lincoln Colloquium, Springfield, 1999 (Springfield:Lincoln Home, 2000), 108; Christopher A. Schnell, Wives, Widows, and Will Makers: Women and the Lawof Property, in Daniel W. Stowell, ed., In Tender Consideration: Women, Families, and the Law in AbrahamLincolns Illinois (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 129-58. As David Bromwich pointed out inquestioning Donalds interpretation, Womens suffrage was in the air in the 1830s. David Bromwich,Lincolns Constitutional Necessity, Raritan 20 (2001): 2. Richard Lawrence Miller sensibly concluded thatLincoln was not joking because such levity would have been reckless in a campaign document. Miller,Prairie Politician, 75. Donald wrongly views other statements by Lincoln as jokes. See below, chapter 6, for adiscussion of Donalds mistaken treatment of the miller, Jacob Tiger.ccxxxix The young woman was Lillian Conlee, who told this story to her granddaughter, Helen Ruth Reed.Reed, A Prophecy Lincoln Made, Boston Herald, 9 February 1930.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

350

suffrage] was one of time only.ccxl During his presidency, Lincoln readily spared the lives ofsoldiers condemned to death by courts martial; the Judge Advocate General of the army,however, recalled that his mercy did not extend to rapists. He shrank with evident pain fromeven the idea of shedding human blood. . . . In every case he always leaned to the side ofmercy. His constant desire was to save life. There was only one class of crimes I alwaysfound him prompt to punisha crime which occurs more or less frequently about allarmiesnamely, outrages upon women. He never hesitated to approve the sentence in thesecases.ccxliWife-beaters also angered Lincoln, who in 1839 warned a hard-drinking Springfieldcobbler to stop abusing his spouse. When this admonition went unheeded, Lincoln and somefriends became vigilantes, as one of them later remembered: The drunken shoemaker hadforgotten Lincolns warning. It was late at night and we dragged the wretch to an open spaceback of a store building, stripped him of his shirt and tied him to a post. Then we sent for hiswife, and arming her with a good stout switch bade her to light in. She was a littlereluctant at first, but soon warmed up to her work, and emboldened by our encouragingand sometimes peremptory directions, performed her delicate task lustily and well. When the

ccxl Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 11 February 1887, Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress;Herndon to John C. Henderson, n.p., n.d., William Hayes Ward, ed., Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from HisAssociates, Reminiscences of Soldiers, Statesmen and Citizens (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1895), 21.ccxli Joseph Holt, interview with John G. Nicolay, 29 October 1879, Burlingame, ed., Oral History of Lincoln,69-70. For Lincolns handling of six individual rape cases, see Thomas P. Lowry, Dont Shoot That Boy!:Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice (Macon City, Iowa: Savas, 1999), 56, 209, 214, 245-48, 255-56. Lowryhas painstakingly examined the records of tens of thousands of Civil War court martial cases. Of the 276 Unionsoldiers executed during the Civil War, 22 were found guilty of rape. Once convicted, they were speedilydispatched, usually within seventy-two hours. Robert I. Alotta, Civil War Justice: Union Army Executionsunder Lincoln (Shippensburg: White Mane, 1989), 30. Alotta notes that Lincoln provided clemency for alltypes of military offenders, except rapists. Ibid., 31. On July 18, 1863, after spending six hours with thepresident and with Holt on courts martial decisions, John Hay noted in his diary: I was amused at theeagerness with which the President caught at any fact which would justify him in saving the life of acondemned soldier. He was only merciless in cases where meanness or cruelty were shown. MichaelBurlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincolns White House: The Complete Civil War Diaryof John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 64.

351

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

culprit had been sufficiently punished, Lincoln gave the signal Enough, and he wasreleased; we helped him on with his shirt and he shambled ruefully toward his home. For hissake we tried to keep all knowledge of the affair from the public; but the lesson had its effect,for if he ever again molested his wife we never found it out.ccxliiLincoln never indulged in gossip about the ladies, nor aided in the circulation ofvillage scandal. His conversation was free from injurious comment in individual cases freer from unpleasant allusions than that of most men.ccxliii (He was not always chivalrous.In New Salem, he once used his sharp wit to humiliate a young woman. While he wasserving food at a party, a girl there who thought herself pretty smart protested that he filledher plate to overflowing. She remarked quite pert and sharp, Well, Mr. Lincoln, I didntwant a cart-load. Later, when she returned for more food, he announced in a loud voice,All right, Miss Liddy, back up your cart and Ill fill it again. The guests all laughed whileMiss Liddy went off by herself and cried the whole evening.)ccxlivIn a public letter announcing his candidacy for reelection in 1836, Lincoln alsopromised that as a legislator he would be guided by the wishes of his constituents insofar ashe knew what those wishes were, and otherwise by what my own judgment teaches me willbest advance their interests. The only policy issue he addressed was internal improvements,

ccxlii James Matheny, quoted in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 70-71. Weiks notes of Mathenysstatement read thus: tied him to a post near a well back of [the] Court House[,] stripped his shirtsent for hiswifewho whaled him tremendously. Lincoln had wanted to do it himself a few days before. JamesMatheny, interview with Jesse W. Weik, 12 September 1888, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,667. Lincolns other friends involved in this affair were Evan Butler and Noah Rickard.ccxliii Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Lincoln, 82.ccxliv Stevens, A Reporters Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 7.

352

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

which he said should be funded with proceeds from the sale of federal lands rather than bystate taxes and borrowing.ccxlvIn the 1836 campaign, Lincoln joined the Whig leadership and became a virtuosobelittler of Democrats.ccxlvi A legislative colleague from Sangamon County, Robert L.Wilson, said that Lincoln was by common consent looked up to and relied on as the leadingWhig exponent; that he was the best versed and most captivating and trenchant speaker ontheir side; that he preserved his temper nearly always, and when extremely provoked, he didnot respond with the illogical proposal to fight about it, but used the weapons of sarcasm andridicule, and always prevailed.ccxlviiSuch weaponry was not uncommon in the arsenals of frontier politicians. AlexanderP. Field, secretary of state of Illinois and a political ally of Lincoln, was a fearful andterrible opponent in a political campaign, withering in sarcasm and repartee, andpossessed of a marvelous capacity for invectives, which he used unsparingly.ccxlviiiCongressman Thomas L. Harris, the leading Democrat in Menard County in the 1840s and1850s, was celebrated for his gift of sarcasm as keen as a Damascus blade.ccxlix A fellowDemocrat in that county, Peter Cartwright, was known as a debater who falls upon his

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

antagonist with irresistible vigor and crushes him with sarcasm.ccl A Whig leader inChicago, Justin Butterfield, wielded the weapons of sarcasm and irony with crushing power,and was especially effective in invective.ccli Through the speeches of Richard Bissell,governor of Illinois from 1857 to 1860, ran a vein of scathing and burning satire.cclii KirbyBenedict, a Democratic leader in Decatur, was a master of satire, sarcasm and ridicule.ccliiiIn neighboring Indiana, the young Whig orator Caleb B. Smith (whom Lincoln wouldappoint secretary of the interior) crushed opponents with his scathing sarcasm.cclivIn the campaigns of 1832 and 1834, Robert L. Wilson recalled, Lincoln had beenbashful and timid and had confined himself to the strictly rural districts. But in 1836, heput away his maiden reserve, and spoke as unrestrainedly at Springfield as at New Salem. Hegained the approval and applause of his friends and the respect and fear of his enemies, andbecame, by that very canvass, a leader of his party in Sangamon County, which distinction henever lost.cclv Wilson noted that Lincoln nearly always kept his temper. A week after hedeclared his candidacy, however, he found it difficult to do so. When Colonel Robert Allen, aleading Democrat known as a great blow, a wild exaggerator, & somewhat of a l[ia]r,told New Salemites that he could destroy the young politician by revealing information thathe had learned, but that he would forbear releasing it, Lincoln charged that Allen would be accl Frederick J. Jobson, America, and American Methodism (London: J. S. Virtue, 1857), 210, quoted in Bray,Peter Cartwright, 180.ccli Isaac N. Arnold, Recollections of the Early Chicago and Illinois Bar, Chicago Bar Association Lectures,no. 22 (Chicago: Fergus, 1882), 13.cclii Linder, Reminiscences, 177.ccliii Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexicos Ancient Capital (Santa Fe: Santa FeMexican Press, 1925), 351.ccliv Richard J. Thomas, Caleb B. Smith: Whig Orator and Politician Lincolns Secretary of Interior (Ph.D.dissertation, Indiana University, 1969), 29.cclv Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 129. Whitney said of Wilson: From Mr. Wilson, whom I knew intimately .. ., I learned much of the career of the great President in those early days. Ibid., 140.

354

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

traitor to his countrys interest if he refused to make public his supposedly damagingfacts.cclvi Later in the campaign, Lincoln called an anonymous critic a liar and a scoundreland threatened to give his proboscis a good wringing.cclviiWhen angry, Lincoln often resorted to sarcasm and ridicule. In July 1836, during adebate at Springfield, he was attacked by George Forquer, a Democratic leader whomLincoln had derided in the Sangamo Journal as King George, the royal George, and themost unpopular of all the party.cclviii Forquer, who had recently converted from the antiJacksonians to the Democratic party and had subsequently won appointment as register ofthe Springfield land office, owned a splendid home, widely considered the finest inSpringfield. Adorning it was a lightning rod, an invention that fascinated Lincoln.cclix In aslasher-gaff speech, Forquer said: This young man will have to be taken down; and I amtruly sorry that the task devolves upon me. Lincoln responded witheringly: The gentlemancommenced his speech by saying that this young man would have to be taken down, alludingto me; I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of the politician; but livelong, or die young, I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, change my politics, and

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

simultaneous with the change receive an office worth $3,000 per year, and then have to erecta lightning-rod over my house to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God.cclxIn that same canvass, Lincoln attacked other Democratic leaders, most notably Dr.Jacob M. Early, a physician and Methodist minister known as The Fighting Parson, whoseskinning by Lincoln became a legend in Sangamon County.cclxi At a Springfield meeting,Lincoln, Early, John Calhoun, Peter Quinton, and Ninian W. Edwards addressed a largeaudience in the courthouse. After Edwards opened the event, the impulsive, hot-temperedEarly, who was regarded as one of the most effective debaters in the State, followed. Hewas severe upon Edwards, who climbed on a table so as to be seen by Dr Early and everyone in the house, and at the top of his voice told Early that the charge was false.cclxii Amongother things, Early had said that a Springfield Whig (perhaps Edwards) had chided theDemocrats for their stand on black suffrage and would sooner see his daughter married to anegro than a poor white man.cclxiii Edwards was constitutionally an aristocrat who hateddemocracy as the devil is said to hate holy water.cclxiv

cclx Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes of a Visit to California: Two Lectures(Louisville: John P. Morton, 1884), 17-18; Speeds statement, Louisville, 1882, Oldroyd, ed., LincolnMemorial, 143-45; Speed, interview with Herndon, [1865-66], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,478; Speed, statement for Herndon, [by 1882], ibid., 589. Lincolns complaint that Forquer had sold out hispolitical principles for an office had long been a staple of Whig campaign rhetoric. Sangamo Journal, 6 and 13June 1835, 19 November 1836. For a similarly effective retort used by Alexander P. Field, see Linder,Reminiscences, 206-7.cclxi Arnold, Life of Lincoln, 49; John Richard Weber, An Episode of Journalism in 1840, Journal of theIllinois State Historical Society 23 (1930): 508.cclxii Robert L. Wilson to Herndon, Sterling, Illinois, 10 February 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 203.cclxiii Account of the meeting by Up to the Hub, Sangamo Journal, 16 July 1836. Early responded bychallenging Edwards to a duel, which was cancelled when friends intervened. Two years later Early was killedby a political opponent. Harry E. Pratt, Abraham Lincolns First Murder Trial, Journal of the Illinois StateHistorical Society 37 (1944): 242-49.cclxiv Linder, Reminiscences, 280.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

356

Provoked by Earlys speech, Lincoln challenged him. A witness reported that at first, heappeared embarrassed, and his air was such as modest merit always lends to one who speaksof his own acts. He claimed only so much credit as belonged to one of the members of thelast Legislature, for getting the State out of debt. As he progressed, Lincolns speechbecame more fluent, and his manner more easy. He lifted the lid, and exposed to the eyethe wretched condition of some of the acts of the Van Buren party. A girl might be born andbecome a mother before the Van Buren men will forget Mr. Lincoln. From beginning to endMr. Lincoln was frequently interrupted by loud bursts of applause from a generouspeople.cclxv Lincoln spoke in that tenor intonation of voice that ultimately settled down intothat clear Shrill monotone Style of Speaking, that enabled his audience, however large, tohear distinctly the lowest Sound of his voice.cclxvi According to John Locke Scrippss 1860campaign biography, when Lincoln took his seat, his reputation was made. He had not onlyachieved a signal victory over the acknowledged champion of Democracy, but he hadplaced himself, by a single effort, in the very front rank of able and eloquent debaters. Thesurprise of his audience was only equaled by their enthusiasm; and of all the surprised peopleon that memorable occasion, perhaps no one was more profoundly astonished than Lincolnhimself.cclxviiLincoln also belittled others. In July at Springfield, he skinned Richard Quinton, and ata meeting in Mechanicsburg he peeled another Democrat.cclxviii Such tactics could be

cclxv Account of the meeting by Up to the Hub, Sangamo Journal, 16 July 1836.cclxvi Robert L. Wilson to Herndon, Sterling, Illinois, 10 February 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 203. See also John B. Weber, interview with Herndon, Pawnee, Illinois, [ca. 1 November 1866],ibid., 388.cclxvii Scripps, Life of Lincoln, ed. Basler and Dunlap, 73-74.cclxviii James Gourley, interview with Herndon, [1865-66], Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,451.

357

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

dangerous, for violence was not unknown in Illinois politics. After Usher Linder ridiculedthe mayor of Quincy, that official ambushed him with a stout cudgel, landing several blowson the back of his head. Theophilus W. Smith, a state supreme court justice, once pulled agun on Governor Ninian Edwards, who seized the weapon and broke Judge Smiths jaw withit. At Springfield in 1839, Isaac P. Walker, after absorbing verbal abuse from attorney E. G.Ryan, flogged his traducer. Fifteen years later, Paul Selby, editor of the Morgan Journal, wascaned on the streets of Jacksonville for criticism appearing in that paper.cclxixWhat Lincoln said as he peeled and skinned his victims during the campaign isunrecorded, but many abusive, insulting, heavy-handed anonymous and pseudonymousattacks on Democrats, probably by him, appeared in the Sangamo Journal. In 1835 and 1836,that Whig paper ran satirical letters ostensibly written by prominent Democrats, making theirauthors look ridiculous.cclxx Lincoln almost certainly wrote them. In February 1836, theJournal published two such epistles over the signature Johnny Blubberhead, a mockingsobriquet for George R. Weber, co-editor of Springfields Jacksonian newspaper, TheRepublican. Composed in a primitive dialect like that of Lincolns 1842 pseudonymousRebecca missive (whose authorship Lincoln acknowledged), the first Blubberhead lettersatirized various Democratic leaders and the recently-introduced convention system. JohnCalhoun, a prominent Democrat, was burlesqued shamelessly. Blubberhead (Weber) reportsto Democratic Congressman William L. May: Since Cal[houn] lost part of his ear against

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

358

the mantel piece hes been lopsided, and I thinks it hurt his eyedears. Hes given greatly totalking to heself; and I heard him talk tother day so I was afeared that somethin was brewen.He said if he took $200 twas nobodys business; he needed it hed worked for the party and hed be (and then he used an awful word) if he didnt blow up the whole party if theydidnt do somthin for him. Blubberhead (Weber) recommended firing all the postmastersand outlawing the distribution through the mail of the Sangamo Journal as the way whatwould make dimocrats of the Van Buren system. He complained that May had allowedanother printer, William Walters of Vandalia, to receive government patronage in Illinois:This aint fair; you promised to give me all the printin and I holds you to your bargain. Iwouldnt a left the anti-masons if you hadnt promised me. Alluding to charges against Mayinvolving theft and lechery, Blubberhead warned him against trying your old Edwardsvilletricks.cclxxiMay was an easy target for ridicule. A man of good address and a capital stumpspeaker, he served in the Illinois House of Representatives in the late 1820s andsubsequently in the U.S. House of Representatives (1834-1839).cclxxii With a very faircomplexion and sandy hair and a powerful frame, he had received a fair education, butthat was all. He was a politician by profession, and was a fairly good lawyer as well.cclxxiii In1834, a Springfield clergyman said that a greater compound of meanness and stupidity wasnever mingled than in May, who was accused of having been guilty of a burglary a fewyears since. This charge was published in a newspaper. He immediately wrote to some of his

February 1836.cclxxii History of Sangamon County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-State, 1881), 91.cclxxiii Caton, Early Bench and Bar, 117-18.

359

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

friends who were acquainted with the transaction, and published a reply from one of them,which stated that at the time of the trial, it was the general impression that he [May] did notenter the House in the night time with a design to commit murder, but for the sake of anillicit intercourse with some female there. This, Mr. May published as his defense, and calledupon the people to overlook the follies of his youth!cclxxivThe second Johnny Blubberhead letter was equally crude. Its author bemoaned thefailure of the country to go to war with England in order to enhance Martin Van Burenselectoral prospects. We is very sorry that England has offered to mediate. Why didnt youtell Mr. Van Buren not to accept it. If we can get a war agoing, as you say, we can use up allthe revenue so that [Henry] Clays Bill [to distribute revenues from land sales to the states]cant pass and so as we can have thousands of officers to electioneer for Mr. Van Buren.Blubberhead declared that I is sorry Mr. Adams has become a dimocrat because as how agood many of our friends thinks it strange; and if they should come to find out that Mr. VanBuren depends altogether on the federals for his election, they will go off from us like shotfrom a shovel.cclxxvThe following month, the Sangamo Journal published a letter ostensibly by CongressmanMay, but doubtless by Lincoln, in which the author laments to Weber that the difficultywith France is settled. As we must have a war at any rate, we are determined it shall bedirected against the surplus funds of the [federal] treasury. If we help ourselves to thosefunds, we can elect any man President we please. You know the potency of the spoils. Doall you can against Clays Land Bill by talking; but dont publish anything on the subject.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

360

Should that bill pass and the surplus funds be divided among the States to make rail roadsand canals and pay school-masters, the thing would be out with us. If we were to be deprivedof the spoils, we should be as weak as was Samson when shorn of his locks byDelilah.cclxxviWilliam Walters had reportedly urged Congressman May to admit publicly that in1832 he had written a letter recounting the story of a corrupt bargain involving two Whigs,George Forquer and John Calhoun, who allegedly agreed to switch parties in return forappointment to government offices.cclxxvii In his supposed reply, May expressed anxiety thatthe people of the West are too independent and highminded to submit to our dictation. ButVan Buren assured him that in time they would come around: He says the people of NewYork proved somewhat refractory when the harness was first put upon them, and frequentlykicked out of the traces, and occasionally broke the heads of their drivers; but by a free useof the whip and spur, holding a tight rein, and making examples of a few of the firstoffenders, they became so docile and gentle, that he could guide them without reins by thecrook of his finger, or wink of the eye. In Washington, the system worked well: Everything that is determined by our chief is promptly executed, right or wrong. This thing ofpolitical honesty, which our opponents stickle so much about, has long since beenexpunged from the vocabulary of our party. Blubberhead regretted that Mays opponentwould be John Todd Stuart: This I have been dreading for a long time. You know he hasever been a thorn in our side, and that all our efforts to break him down, have failed.cclxxviii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Other satirical letters purportedly by Democrats, full of sarcastic humor, focused on

voting rights for blacks. Martin Van Buren, the Democratic presidential heir-apparent, hadfifteen years earlier endorsed limited suffrage for free blacks in New York.cclxxix In 1840,Lincoln would openly attack Van Buren for this stand.cclxxx In 1836, he may have done sopublicly, but the meager record of his speeches for that year does not show it. Anonymousand pseudonymous journalism probably by Lincoln, however, bristles with such assaults,which were not uncommon throughout the country. (There is a grim irony in Lincolnsdenunciation of Van Burens support of limited voting rights for blacks, for in 1865 JohnWilkes Booth murdered Lincoln for publicly endorsing that very policy.)To embarrass Van Buren and his supporters, Whigs in the 1835-36 special session of theIllinois legislature introduced a resolution condemning several policies that Democratsgenerally favored, including the following: Colored persons ought not to be admitted to thecclxxix In August 1821, a constitutional convention assembled in Albany, where a committee on voting rightsproposed an amendment stipulating that [e]very white male citizen of the age of 21 years who shall haveresided in the state for six months next preceding any election, and shall within one year preceding the electionhave paid any tax assessed upon him . . . shall be allowed to vote. John Jay moved an amendment striking outthe word white, thus allowing free blacks to vote; it passed by a narrow margin (63-59), Van Buren sidingwith the majority. In October, Van Buren voted for an amendment which would enfranchise only those blackswho owned at least $250 worth of property. He also supported a plan exempting blacks from taxation until theyhad accumulated enough property to be eligible for the suffrage. In explaining his vote, he said he had votedagainst a total and unqualified exclusion, for he would not draw a revenue from them (the blacks) and yet denythem the right of suffrage. But this provision met his approbation. They were exempted from taxation until theyhad qualified to vote. The right was not designed to exclude any portion of the community who will notexercise the right of suffrage in its purity. This held out inducement to industry, and would receive his support.Nathaniel H. Carter and William L. Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821Assembled for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution of the State of New-York (Albany: Hosford, 1821),255-65, 367-68, 376. On the convention of 1821, see Phyllis F. Field, The Politics of Race in New York: TheStruggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 35-37; Peter J. Galie,Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), 76-77;John Anthony Casais, The New York State Constitutional Convention of 1821 and its Aftermath (Ph.D.dissertation, Columbia University, 1967); Dixon Ryan Fox, The Negro Vote in Old New York, PoliticalScience Quarterly 32 (1917): 258-63. The committee charged with dealing with black suffrage recommendedthat the limited access to the ballot which free blacks had enjoyed for over forty years be entirely removed.Some protested that all property requirements should be removed regardless of race. Neither side prevailed; theconvention decided to allow blacks who met a $250 property qualification to vote while simultaneouslyremoving property qualifications for whites. By 1825, only 298 blacks (out of a total black population of29,701) were able to meet that qualification.cclxxx Speech of 2 May 1840, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:210.

362

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

right of suffrage.cclxxxi When, as expected, the Democrats voted against that omnibusresolution, Whigs, including Lincoln, taunted them for implicitly endorsing black votingrights.cclxxxii The Sangamo Journal protested that Illinois is threatened to be overrun withfree negroes and suggested that such undesirables be sent to Van Burens home state ofNew York.cclxxxiii (The census of 1835 showed that of the 17,523 people in SangamonCounty, only 104 were black.) The editor denounced Van Burens running mate, Richard M.Johnson of Kentucky, as the husband of a negro wench, and the father of a band ofmulatoes. (In fact, Johnson had a black mistress who bore him two children.) As electionday drew near in 1836, the Journal asked: If Mr. Van Buren be made the president, is it notreasonable to suppose that before his term of service expires, free negro suffrage will prevailthroughout the nation? If Col. Johnson be elected, will not every future aspirant to the vicepresidency, set about qualifying himself for public favor by marrying a negress? If these menbe elected, how long before poor white girls will become the waiting maids of sootywenches? How long before we shall have a negro president? How long before white men andblack men will have passed away, and the whole population of the country become one huge

cclxxxi The other resolutions were: President making is foreign to the duties of legislatures. President makingdestroys the harmony of legislation. Every man who is eligible to an office has an undeniable right to become acandidate for the same. The people have a right to vote for whom they please without the sanction of caucusesor conventions. Public officers should not attempt to influence elections. The price of public lands ought to bereduced. There should be no property qualification to entitle a man to vote. Pre-emption rights ought to begranted to actual settlers upon public lands. Sangamo Journal, 16 January 1836.cclxxxii A Whig aspirant for the General Assembly, Andrew McCormick, said in his declaration of candidacy,some of the supporters of that gentleman [Van Buren] have declared themselves in favor of extending the rightof suffrage to free blacks. I am opposed to this doctrine. Similarly, John Dawson announced his support forthe great principle of civil liberty: that all white men, rich or poor, have an equal right to elect, or to be elected,to office. Lincolns good friend from Athens, Robert L. Wilson, declared: I most unqualifiedly hold that allwhite male inhabitants possessing a constitutional qualification, whether opulent or indigent, should exercisethe inestimable right of electing or being elected to any office with the gift of the People. Ninian W. Edwardsof Springfield stated that if any believe in the propriety of extending the right of suffrage to free negroes, suchan opinion must be the result of ignorance or a want of principle. J. M. S. Smith of Carlinville unqualifiedlyopposed the extension of the right of suffrage to free negroes. Sangamo Journal, 18 and 25 June, 2 July 1836.cclxxxiii Sangamo Journal, 7 November 1835.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

363

mass of degenerate and stupid mulatoes?cclxxxiv Many opponents of Van Buren harped onJohnsons domestic life.cclxxxvIn January 1836, Lincolns anonymous dispatch to the Sangamo Journal chastisedDemocratic legislators for opposing the proposition that the elective franchise should bekept free from contamination by the admission of colored voters.cclxxxvi Four months later, asthe political campaign heated up, a letter in the Sangamo Journal, probably by Lincoln, putthe following words into the mouth of a Democratic congressman: if we could only carryour plan into effect to allow free negroes to vote . . . I think our democratic principles wouldflourish for a long time.cclxxxvii In the same issue of the Sangamo Journal appeared a letterostensibly written by a black gentleman named Sees-Her, but in all likelihood composedby Lincoln:Massa Prenter:When I was up dare in Springfield the pepul kep axin me, Hows the election gwinedown in your parts? Now I couldnt den exactly precisely tell how de folks was gwine but Ibeen asken all around sence, and I gest wants to tell presactly how it is. De gemmen ob colerall gwine for dat man wat writes de epitaphs of truth and vartue wid a syringe some to Mr.Katshoun [Calhoun], and skuire the Builder [William Carpenter]. Dis brings me to a writeunderstandin for to no what make de niggers all vote for dese men.

cclxxxiv Sangamo Journal, 3 September 1836. Johnson, the paper said, when young, took to his bed a negress,made her the mother of a family of mulatoes, and finally upon her death, took a second daughter of Africa, andby whom he may become the parent of a second edition of mulatoes. See also ibid., 24 September 1836.cclxxxv Thomas Brown, The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor Johnson as an Issue in the National ElectionCampaign of 1835-36, Civil War History 39 (1993): 5-30.cclxxxvi Vandalia correspondence, 6 January, Sangamo Journal, 16 January 1836.cclxxxvii Letter dated Washington, 27 April, Sangamo Journal, 4 June 1836.

364

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Now I spose you knows as how you sees dese men goes for Wanjuren [Van Buren], andthat dare tudder man wat lub de nigger so. Wanjuren says de nigger all shall vote, and datoder man in Kentucky state [Richard M. Johnson], is goin to make all the nigger womenschildren white. Oh hush, ha, he, ho! Youd split your sides laffin to hear Capun [Calhoun] tell how much Wanjuren is goin to do for de nigger de ways deys goin for him, man oh,hush! and dat man who used to buse old Jackson so, case as how he was ginst the niggersvotin ah, law! de way he roots for Wanjuren now is sorter singular he look precisely likea pig off in a Corn Field wid one ear marked, so he massa know em. De way de niggers isgoin for him now, oh hush! And skuire, the builder, de ways dey is going to run him aheadem all aint nobodys business kase as how hese goin to sen all dese poor white folks off toLibrary [Liberia], and let the free niggers vote and wen we send all dese tarnal white folksoff, wese goin to send him to Kongress, and den de niggers will be in town! oh, hush!In grait haist, yours.cclxxxviiiIn June, Lincoln evidently composed a letter purportedly written by a Democratlamenting that some party loyalists had grown disenchanted with their legislative ticket ofthree preachers and an advocate for the right of suffrage to be extended to negroes.cclxxxixThat month, another such letter (probably by Lincoln) had a Democrat complain: Thepeople are up in arms about the matter [the Democrats vote in the legislature on blacksuffrage.] They say . . . . that they dont like that a free negro should crowd them away fromthe polls. They were upset because two of the Van Buren Electoral Ticket . . . voted that . .. free negroes ought to vote at elections.ccxc Into the mouth of a Democratic editor whose

cclxxxviii Sangamo Journal, 4 June 1836.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

paper (The Republican) had collapsed, an anonymous satirist (probably Lincoln) put thesewords: We were the more anxious to keep the Republican agoing, because we wished todefend the conduct of our friends in the Legislature last winter, in regard to their votes infavor of negro suffrage . . . . I do believe if free negroes were allowed to vote here, they [theDemocrats] would get every vote.ccxciIn July, a letter by a Democrat (probably Lincoln) had another Democrat explain whyone of their candidates, William Carpenter, had dropped out: at the last session of theIllinois Legislature the squire voted to allow free negroes the right of suffrage. ThisDemocrat then asked: Now if this is an objection against the squire, will it not apply withdouble force to Mr. Van Buren, our candidate for the Presidency? Did not Mr. Van Burenfirst bring forward this odious measure in the New York Convention? I say most positivelythat he did; and for proof of the statement I refer you to the journals of the Convention of1821, Sept. 19, page 106.ccxcii (Democratic candidates for the legislature denied that theyfavored black suffrage.)ccxciiiIn fact, Van Buren disliked slavery but believed it should be dealt with by state and localgovernments, not the federal government; supported the abolition of property qualificationsfor white New Yorkers in 1821 and the retention of such qualifications for blacks; andopposed the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. During the 1836 campaign, he publiclydeclared: I must go into the presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponentof any attempt on the part of congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, againstthe wishes of the slave holding states; and also with the determination equally decided toccxci Letter dated Springfield, 23 June, Sangamo Journal, 25 June 1836. George R. Weber and WilliamWalters edited the Springfield Republican.ccxcii Letter from a Democrat, Lick Creek, 2 July, Sangamo Journal, 9 July 1836.ccxciii Among them were Stinson H. Anderson and Richard Quinton. Sangamo Journal, 9 July 1836.

366

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

resist the slightest interference with the subject in the states where it exists.ccxciv In private,Van Buren urged important New York friends to attack abolitionists.ccxcv This assault on VanBurens support for limited black suffrage would be repeated vigorously in 1840 and wasstill being cited as late as the presidential campaign two decades thereafter.ccxcviWhen not engaged in race-baiting, Lincoln excoriated the Democrats newlyestablished convention system, which Ebenezer Peck and Stephen A. Douglas had introducedin December 1835.ccxcvii Previously, any Democrat who wished to run for office simplyannounced his intention and entered the race; now candidates must win endorsement at anominating convention.ccxcviii Lincoln called adherents of this innovation slaves of themagician [Martin Van Buren], eastern trading politicians, and Hartford Conventionfederalists from New England, whereas Democrats opposing Pecks innovation were menborn and raised west of the mountains and south of the Potomac.ccxcix The author of somesatirical letters to the Journal (probably Lincoln) had a Democrat bemoan his partys failureto hold a county caucus to nominate officers: The people are not yet sufficiently drilled forthis purpose.ccc Writing under the name Spoon River, a correspondent (probably Lincoln)denounced the convention system for assuming that six men can regulate the affairs ofFulton County better than six hundred; that our old backwoodsmen, squatters, and pioneersccxciv Van Buren to Junius Amis et al., 4 March 1836, quoted in William G. Shade, The Most Delicate andExciting Topics: Martin Van Buren, Slavery, and the Election of 1836, Journal of the Early Republic 18(1998): 478.ccxcv Holt, Rise and Fall of the Whig Party, 44.ccxcvi Foolish Falsehoods, Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 23 October 1860.ccxcvii Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 41-42;Sangamo Journal, 12 December 1835 (dispatches of December 7 and 8).ccxcviii James Stanton Chase, Jacksonian Democracy and the Rise of the Nominating Convention, MidAmerica 45 (1963): 22-49.ccxcix Sangamo Journal, 2 and 16 January 1836 (dispatches of December 26 and January 6).

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

367

have no right to think, and act, for themselves, when with the aid of this machine six men cando it for them, with perfect ease.ccciIn a letter ostensibly by the Democratic state printer, William Walters, the author(probably Lincoln) ridiculed Stephen A. Douglas for imposing the convention system on hisdistrict: To cap the climax of our mishaps lately, I am told that our faithful man Douglasadmitted in public that he was the father of the convention system in Morgan county, and didpass a resolution declaring that no man should be supported by the republicans of Morgan foroffice unless he was nominated by this convention. Now, really, this is too bad: he must belaboring under mental derangement; for he certainly has sense enough, when himself, to keepfrom cutting his own jugular, to say nothing of the party. It would seem that the old proverbis about to be verified, that the devil helps us into difficulties, but never helps us out.Something must be done for him, notwithstanding he has done us more harm in this instancethan he can do us good in a life time. He must be dismissed from service and put upon halfpay.ccciiLincoln also ridiculed George Forquer. When U.S. Senator Elias Kent Kane died in1835, Lincoln poked fun at the Democrats who scrambled to replace him: This news had themagic effect, to produce much of both feigned sorrow and heart-felt rejoicing. Kanesgreatest political friends are glad of it, not that they loved him less, but that they loved his

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

office more.ccciii (Forquer denounced the author of this piece as a monster, devoid of theordinary susceptibilities of humanity.)cccivWhile ridiculing political foes, Lincoln praised his friends, like John Todd Stuart.Referring to the passage of the canal bill, he declared that northern Illinois is under thestrongest obligations to the untiring zeal of Mr. Stuart . . . , who has spared no pains in a highminded and honorable way to secure the accomplishment of this great work.cccv Lincolncalled Archibald Williams much the closest reasoner in the Senate and asserted that itwould be a gratification to any man to hear him tear in tatters the new democracy. Did I sayman? That is wrong; for I do not expect the hired tools of Van Buren to be pleased with anyremarks leading to the exposure of their hollow professions.cccviLincoln assailed the Monster party for delaying construction of the Illinois andMichigan canal.cccvii He claimed the Democrats were blocking that internal improvementuntil they could vest the legislature with the power to appoint canal commissioners. Lincolncaustically observed that there are men hanging on here who are bankrupt in principle,business habits, and every thing else who have the promises of these offices as soon as theyshall be made elective.cccviii Lincoln referred to Democratic supporters of Martin Van Burenas ruffle-shirted Vannies, whereas supporters of his own favorite candidate for the Whigpresidential nomination (Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White) he called the people.cccix

ccciii Sangamo Journal, 2 January 1836 (dispatches of December 26 and 27).

ccciv Springfield Republican, n.d., quoted in the Sangamo Journal, 16 January 1836.cccv Sangamo Journal, 16 January 1836 (dispatch of January 7).cccvi Sangamo Journal, 19 December 1835 (dispatch of December 14). See also Linder, Reminiscences, 239.cccvii Sangamo Journal, 19 December 1835 (dispatch of December 13).cccviii Sangamo Journal, 2 January 1836 (dispatch of 26 December 1835).cccix Sangamo Journal, 19 December 1835 (dispatch of December 13) and 16 January 1836 (dispatch ofJanuary 7). There is no one here whose sole business it is to puff Judge White; consequently I seldom hear his

369

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

(Though White was a Jacksonian, his candidacy was viewed by many in the South and Westas a protest against the dictation of northern Democrats who had selected Van Buren.)Lincoln and other Whigs called Democrats locofocos, a term originally applied tothe most radical faction of the party, which allegedly had abandoned Jeffersonian andJacksonian principles. When opponents denounced that tactic, Lincoln responded with astory about a farmer who captured a skunk in his hen house. In response to the varmintsprotest that he was no polecat, the farmer said: You look like a polecat, . . . act like one,smell like one and you are one, by God, and Ill kill you, innocent & friendly to me as yousay you are. The locofocos, Lincoln continued, claim to be true democrats, but they areonly locofocosthey look like locofocos, . . . act like locofocos, and turning up his noseand backing away a little . . . as if the smell was about to smother him, are locofocos byGod. Lincolns audience nearly bursted their sides laughing.cccxOne of his fellow Whig candidates for the legislature, Robert L. Wilson of Athens,recalled that in the 1836 canvass Lincoln took a leading part, espouseing the Whig side ofall those questions, manifesting Skill and tact in offensive and defensive debates, presentinghis arguments with great force and ability, and boldly attacking the questions and positionstaken by opposing Candidates. Wilson ascribed Lincolns success in debates to his unusualapproach: He was, on the stump, and in the Halls of Legislation a ready Debater,manifesting extraordinary ability in his peculiar manner of presenting his subject.Eschewing the beaten track of other Speakers, and Thinkers, Lincoln appeared toname except when I go among the people, where (God be praised!) I hear nothing else. Vandaliacorrespondence, 13 December, Sangamo Journal, 19 December 1835. In the 1836 presidential election, theWhigs held no nominating convention. White ran for president as the favorite among anti-Jackson forces in theSouth, while William Henry Harrison ran as the favorite of the West and Daniel Webster filled that role in NewEngland.

370

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

comprehend the whole situation of the Subject, and take hold of its first principles. Hisremarkable faculty for concentration enabled him to present his subject in such a manneras nothing but conclusions were presented. He did not reach conclusions from premises,laid down, and eliminated; but his mode of reasoning was purely analytical; his reasons andconclusions were always drawn from analogy. Wilson likened his memory to a great Storehouse in which was Stored away all the facts acquired by reading but principally byobservation; and intercourse with men Woman and children, in their Social, and businessrelations; learning and weighing the motives that prompt each act in life. That unusuallyretentive memory supplied Lincoln with an inexhaustible fund of facts, from which hewould draw conclusions, and illustrating every Subject however complicated withannecdotes drawn from all classes of Society, accomplishing the double purpose, of not onlyproving his Subject by the annecdote, But the annecdote itself possessing so much point andforce, that no one ever forgets, after hearing Mr Lincoln tell a Story, either the argument ofthe Story, the Story itself, or the author.cccxiOne of Lincolns stiffest political opponents, John Hill (son of the New Salemmerchant Samuel Hill), offered a similar analysis of his remarkable eloquence.cccxii Theconvincing power of Mr. Lincolns plain conversational method of address, recalled Hill,was marvelous and almost ir[r]esistable, Plain, candid and honest, without the slightest

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

effort at display or oratory. He carried his auditors along to unconscious conviction. Thebenign expression of his face and his earnest interest in the subject, asserted with suchsimplicity, secured sympathetic absorbtion. All listened in close attention to the end, andwhen he had finished there pervaded a momentary solemn silence before his audiencerealised that it was the end. Hill described Lincoln as the planest man I ever heard. Hewas not a speaker but a talker. Such was his honesty, candor, and fairness that it wasscarcely possible for an auditor not to believe every word [he] uttered. The same inconversation. He left behind him on all occasions, a feeling one can not express of respectand that accompanied by affection for a good man.cccxiii Lincolns fellow attorney and Whigpolitician Albert Taylor Bledsoe detected in Lincolns speeches a homely strength, and arustic beauty of expression, which are more effective than the oratorical periods of an[Edward] Everett or a [George] Bancroft. His simple, terse, plain, direct English, goes righthome to the point.cccxivOn August 1, 1836, Lincoln handily won reelection, finishing first in a field ofseventeen.cccxv In New Salem, he ran well ahead of the victorious Whig ticket.cccxvi (Three

cccxiii John Hill to Ida M. Tarbell, Columbus, Georgia, 4 April and 17 February 1896, Tarbell Papers,Allegheny College.cccxiv Bledsoe, review of Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, The Southern Review 12 (April1873): 333-34.cccxv Lincoln received 1716 votes, William F. Elkin 1694, Ninian W. Edwards 1659, John Dawson 1641,Daniel Stone 1438, Robert L. Wilson 1353, and Andrew McCormick 1306. Theodore Calvin Pease, ed., IllinoisElection Returns, 1818-1848 (Springfield: Lincoln Presidential Library, 1923), 299.cccxvi Of the 145 voters who cast ballots in the villages polling place, 107 voted for Lincoln for the lowerhouse of the General Assembly. The next highest Whig vote-getters for that post were William Elkin with 84,John Dawson with 82, Dan Stone with 81, Robert L. Wilson with 69, and Andrew McCormick with 67. Themost successful Democratic candidate for the Illinois House, Thomas Wynne, received 71 votes. In the otherNew Salem precinct, outside the village, Lincoln won 50 of 76 votes cast. Lincolns mentor John Todd Stuart,running for Congress, beat his Democratic opponent, William L. May, 86 to 59 in the village precinct but ranbehind May in the outlying precinct, 40 to 34. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Political Life of New Salem, Illinois,Lincoln Lore no. 1715 (January 1981), 1-3; New Salem Lincoln Collection, Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne,Indiana.

372

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

months later, Van Buren captured the presidency with the help of Illinoiss electoral votes.)As he had been a leader in the campaign, so too that winter Lincoln would spearhead theWhigs in the General Assembly, filling the place vacated John Todd Stuart, who had run forCongress unsuccessfully. The reapportioned legislature had ninety-one members, thirty-sixmore than its immediate predecessor. Of these, less than one fourth were incumbents.cccxviiColleagues in the General Assembly recalled that during the 1836-37 session, Lincoln wasvery prominent, that he had by that time become the acknowledged leader of the Whigs inthe House, because Stuart had gone out and left him a clear field. He was always putforth to squelch some poor wight of a Democrat (who had made himself particularlyobnoxious) by one of his inimitable stories.cccxviii In 1839, a Democratic legislator identifiedten colleagues, among them Lincoln, who take up more time than all the members.cccxixAnother member of the General Assembly, Robert L. Wilson, recalled that Lincolnwas a natural debater; he was always ready and always got right down to the merits of hiscase, without any nonsense or circumlocution. As comfortable in the House ofRepresentatives as he was in the houses of New Salem, he had a quaint and peculiar way, allof his own, of treating a subject, and he frequently startled us by his modes but he wasalways right. To Wilson, he seemed to be a born politician. The Whigs followed his lead,but he followed nobodys lead; he hewed the way for us to follow, and we gladly did so. Hisquick mind could grasp and concentrate the matters under discussion, and his clearcccxvii Rodney O. Davis, Lincoln and the Illinois General Assembly, 16.cccxviii Jesse K. Dubois, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 4 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., OralHistory of Lincoln, 30; Joseph Gillespie to Isaac N. Arnold, Edwardsville, Illinois, 6 September 1881, in IsaacN. Arnold, Abraham Lincoln: A Paper Read before the Royal Historical Society, London, June 16th, 1881(pamphlet; Chicago: Fergus, 1881), 194b.cccxix Thomas J. Nance to Catherine Nance, Springfield, 19 December 1839, Fern Nance Pond, ed., Letters ofan Illinois Legislator: 1839-1840, Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 5 (1949): 42. In addition to Lincoln, the

373

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

statement of an intricate or obscure subject was better than an ordinary argument. Wilsonsaid Lincoln virtually did our thinking for us, but he had no arrogance, nothing of thedictatorial; it seemed the right thing to do as he did. His manner was such that he excitedno envy or jealousy, for his colleagues acknowledged that he was so much greater than therest of us that we were glad to abridge our intellectual labors by letting him do the generalthinking for the crowd, inspiring absolute respect, although he was utterly careless andnegligent. Whig Representatives would ride while he would walk, but we recognized himas a master in logic; he was poverty itself when I knew him, but still perfectly independent.He would borrow nothing and never ask favors. He seemed to glide along in life without anyfriction or effort.cccxxYet Lincoln did not glide easily through the opening days of the 1836-37 legislativesession. Shortly after the General Assembly convened, he wrote from Vandalia to a friend:my spirits [are] so low, that I feel I would rather be any place in the world than here. I reallycan not endure the thought of staying here ten weeks.cccxxi He may have been downcastbecause he had nothing to do. On the day before Lincoln penned his dispirited letter, aVandalia newspaper reported that little business has been done in either the Senate or theHouse of Representatives thus far because of the unfinished situation of the State House.The plastering is new and damp, and it became necessary to the comfort and health of themembers to have additional stoves put up.cccxxii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Somehow Lincoln managed to recover from his depression in time to help shapeimportant legislation. With special vehemence he championed the state bank. On January 11,1837, he ridiculed Usher F. Linder, a Democrat who had attacked that institution.cccxxiiiSarcastically acknowledging that Linder was his superior in the faculty of entangling asubject, so that neither himself, or any other man, can find head or tail to it, Lincolndismissed his opponents arguments as silly and harshly declared that if Linder wereunaware of Illinoiss usury statute, he is too ignorant to be placed at the head of thecommittee which his resolution proposes. If, on the other hand, he were aware of that usurylaw (which he did not mention in his flings against the bank), Linder was too uncandid tomerit the respect or confidence of anyone. Lincoln denounced capitalists who generallyact harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and politicians, a set of men whohave interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are,taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. (Lincoln immediatelyadded that I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none canregard it as personal.) In his peroration, he denounced that lawless and mobocratic spirit,whether in relation to the bank or any thing else, which is already abroad in the land; and isspreading with rapid and fearful impetuosity, to the ultimate overthrow of every institution,or even moral principle, in which persons and property have hitherto found security.cccxxiv

cccxxiii Linder had been put up to this action by Theophilus W. Smith, a justice of the Illinois supreme court.Linder, Reminiscences, 260-61. Smith had enthusiastically supported the establishment of the bank, hoping hewould be among its leaders. When fellow stockholders thwarted his bid for power, he turned against theinstitution. Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 118-21. Albert J. Beveridge speculated that Linders speech mayhave been an attack upon Springfield to prevent that town from being selected as the site of the state capital.Beveridge to Jessie Palmer Weber, n.p., 14 January 1925, copy, Beveridge Papers, Library of Congress.cccxxiv Speech of 11 January 1837, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:61-69.

375

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

In this partisan speech, Lincoln did not forthrightly address all the criticisms of thebank.cccxxv When the legislature incorporated the Bank of Illinois, it anticipated that its stockwould be bought primarily by in-state investors. Instead, most shares were purchased byfinanciers in the East who deviously used the names of Illinois farmers as owners of thestock.cccxxvi Linder had justly accused the bank commissioners of violating the law. ThisLincoln dismissed as a quarrel among selfish capitalists which was of no concern to thepeople. In fact, the law had been undermined. Lincoln was also disingenuous in alleging thatthe bank had met its legal requirement to redeem its notes in specie. This provision of the lawwas virtually nullified through clever arrangements by which the nine branches of the Bankof Illinois printed notes which could only be redeemed at the issuing branch. To ensure thatfew such requests for redemption were made, the branches brought their notes intocirculation at remote sites.cccxxviiThough somewhat demagogic, Lincolns speech was predicated on the sound notionthat economic growth required banks and an elastic money supply. His political opponents,with their agrarian fondness for a metallic currency, failed to understand this fundamentalpoint. Banks, he knew, had a vital role to play in financing the canals and railroads essentialfor ending rural isolation and backwardness, a goal he cared about passionately.cccxxviii (Infact, the state bank had been revived in the 1830s to finance internal improvements without

cccxxv Albert J. Beveridge was surprised that Lincoln gave such an aggressive and even bel[l]icose speechwhen he was scrupulously careful not to offend any member of the Legislature or risk the possibility of losinga single vote as he led the forces trying to have Springfield chosen as the state capital. Beveridge to JessiePalmer Weber, n.p., 14 January 1925, copy, Beveridge Papers, Library of Congress.cccxxvi Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 118.cccxxvii Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis StateUniversity Press, 1978), 18.cccxxviii Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, 15-23; Fraysse, Lincoln, Land and Labor,72.

376

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

raising taxes.)cccxxix In addition, he sought to protect the assets earned by ordinary people inthe sweat of their brows; he predicted that the destruction of the bank would annihilate thecurrency of the State and thus render valueless in the hands of our people that reward oftheir former labors.cccxxx Banks also allowed the honest, industrious and virtuous poor toget ahead through loans. Without internal improvements and banks, argued the SangamoJournal, the poor would remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for the rich as longas they live. By making credit difficult to obtain, the Democrats forced the industriouspoor to accumulate capital on their own before starting a business, a process which mighttake decades. The Whigs, by making the surplus capital of the rich available through banks,thus expanded economic opportunity for the poor.cccxxxiLincolns chief goal in the winter of 1836-37 was to have Springfield chosen as thenew state capital. By law, Vandalia would retain that honor until 1839; thereafter some othertown might replace it. A change made sense, for in 1819, when Vandalia had been selected,most Illinoisans lived in the southern part of the state, where Vandalia was located; duringthe 1820s and 1830s, however, more and more settlers flowed into the middle and northerncounties, availing themselves of cheap transportation provided by the Erie canal, completedin 1825, and by Great Lakes steamboat connections to Chicago, opened in 1832. The statesrejection in 1824 of attempts to introduce slavery discouraged some potential immigrantsfrom the South.cccxxxii By 1833, Vandalia seemed inadequate, as one critic put it, because ofits remoteness . . . from the centre, from the most populous districts of the State, and from

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

practicable navigation; its known and striking destitution of any commanding commercialfacilities; the unsightly, monotonous appearance, comparative barrenness and flatness of thecountry immediately surrounding it, rendering it as unhealthy as incommodious, unpleasant,and insusceptible of dense settlement and successful cultivation.cccxxxiii Transportation toVandalia was poor. For two weeks in December 1836, communications between the capitaland Springfield were entirely cut off, owing to the condition of the roads.cccxxxiv A decadeearlier, a traveler had complained that the road for three miles east of Vandalia is . . .impassable with wagons, and nearly so on horseback. It is a perfect marsh or swamp, of softclay, extremely tenacious into which a horse will sink at every step to his knees, and for thewhole distance covered with water to the depth of six or eight inches. That observerdescribed the countryside surrounding Vandalia as hard and sterile, covered with stuntedoaks and apparently unproductive. Prophetically he remarked, its location was injudiciousand, consequently, I think that it can never be a place of much importance.cccxxxvA Hoosier warned that Vandalia was so sickly that every body left it in the summerseason, when it became a charnel-house, a burying place, for all strangers who venture togo there.cccxxxvi In 1842, another visitor to Vandalia warned that [b]ilious fever prevailedhere, and there were several patients in the hotel where we stayed.cccxxxvii In the mid-1820s,

cccxxxiii Seat of Government, by The People, Sangamo Journal, 1 June 1833.

cccxxxiv Vandalia correspondence, 25 December, Sangamo Journal (Springfield), 31 December 1836.cccxxxv Chester A. Loomis, A Journey on Horseback through the Great West in 1825 (Bath, N.Y.: PlaindealerPress, n.d.), unpaginated (entries for July 4 and 5).cccxxxvi Letter by An Eye Witness, Vandalia, 25 June, Illinois State Register (Vandalia), 29 June 1838.cccxxxvii William Oliver, Eight Months in Illinois (Newcastle upon Tyne: William Andrew Mitchell, 1843),99-100.

378

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

that same disease had killed many Vandalians.cccxxxviii To convince skeptics that Vandaliawas unhealthy, critics noted that five legislators had died there between 1830 and 1836.cccxxxixIn response, a local booster protested that the trouble was busthead whiskey which wasmade too freely available to the lawmakers at Ebenezer Capps store, a favorite gatheringplace for members of the General Assembly.cccxl Moreover, critics protested, Vandaliaoffered inferior lodgings and food. In 1836, Justice Samuel D. Lockwood of the statesupreme court complained that all the accommodations are indifferent.cccxli Many yearslater, John Todd Stuart told an interviewer: I remember that one of the objections that wereurged against keeping the seat of government at Vandalia was that they did not feed us onanything but prairie chickens and venison. A piece of fat pork was a luxury in those days we had such a longing for something civilized.cccxlii (One day legislators organizing a deerhunt asked Lincoln to join them. He declined, remarking: You go get the deer, [the hotelproprietor] Mattox can cook it and Ill eat all you can get.)cccxliii Vandalia was also notoriousfor its lawlessness. In 1837, residents deplored the frequent recurrence of brawls anddrunken frays in our streets and lamented that our town has come to the pass, that it isalmost dangerous for one to walk the streets, unless he is armed with dirks, pistols, &c.cccxliv

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

In addition to Springfield, other towns aspired to become the new state capital,including Alton, Decatur, Peoria, and Jacksonville. In an 1834 statewide referendum onrelocating the seat of government, Alton had received 7511 votes, Vandalia 7148, andSpringfield 7044.cccxlv Three years later, Lincoln headed the Springfield forces in thelegislature, even though he was the youngest of the nine-member Sangamon Countydelegation. As Stephen T. Logan recalled, Lincoln was at the head of the project to removethe seat of government here [Springfield]; it was entirely entrusted to him to manage. Themembers were all elected that session upon one ticket. But they all looked to Lincoln as thehead.cccxlvi That delegation, consisting of men whose average height was slightly over sixfeet, was contemptuously labeled by the Springfield Republican the Long Nine, after atype of cheap cigar.cccxlviiTo win support for Springfield, Lincoln and his colleagues did what legislatorsusually do: they cut deals. In 1836, the representative from Morgan County, John J. Hardin,observed that too frequently does it happen, that members support measures that they wouldnot otherwise vote for, to obtain another members vote for a friend.cccxlviii To his wife,Hardin described the legislature as a Den of legislative trading and declared I have fullymade up my mind to renounce politics. A man has no business here [in Vandalia] unless he

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

will debase himself to bargain & trade for his rights.cccxlix In 1839, David Davis told hisfather-in-law that Legislation in our Western States is generally based upon barter, trade &intrigue You vote for my measure, & I will vote for yours seems to be the way in whichthings go hereabouts.cccl That same year a resident of Stephenson County protested againstthe log-rolling which had shaped the General Assemblys internal improvementslegislation.cccli When the legislature first began to meet in Springfield, one memberbemoaned the fact that he and his colleagues were much scattered over the town and havenot the usual facilities for log-rolling and drilling, which were afforded at Vandalia.ccclii Inthe first session of the General Assembly held in the new capital, a journalist reported: Logrolling is now in most successful operation; and that party which understands the art ofbuying and selling votes the best will succeed. In every sense of the word, the longest polewill knock off the persimmon.cccliiiIn 1836-37, the most coveted persimmons were roads, canals, railroads, and riverimprovements, which were universally desired and which the legislature was eager toprovide. Illinoisans were perfectly insane and crazed considerably with the mania for

cccxlix Hardin to Sarah Smith Hardin, Vandalia, 14 December 1836 and 26 February 1837, Hardin FamilyPapers, Chicago History Museum.cccl David Davis to William P. Walker, Bloomington, 26 January 1839, Davis Papers, Lincoln PresidentialLibrary, Springfield. In 1846, a former legislator announced to a friend that he was going to visit the statecapital where I shall remain some days, perhaps weeks logrolling. George W. Harrison to Daniel FrancisHitt, Vandalia, 15 December 1846, D. F. Hitt Papers, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, quoted inRodney O. Davis, Lobbying and The Third House In the Early Illinois General Assembly, The OldNorthwest 14 (1988-89): 267.cccli Letter by Stephenson to the editor, n.p., n.d., Galena Gazette and Advertiser, 1 February 1839.ccclii Springfield correspondence, 12 December, The Illinoisan (Jacksonville), 21 December 1839.cccliii Springfield correspondence by G., 18 December, Alton Telegraph, 28 December 1839.

381

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

canals and railroads.cccliv A colleague of Lincoln in the General Assembly reported that ourState seems wild to follow the eastern States in improvements.ccclvThe Long Nine, under Lincolns direction, promised to support various internalimprovements throughout the state in return for endorsement of Springfields aspirations tobecome the new capital. Helping Lincoln was his mentor, John Todd Stuart, who lobbiedbehind the scenes.ccclvi Since Sangamon Countys delegation was the largest in the GeneralAssembly, it had significant leverage when its members voted as a bloc. One of the LongNine, Robert L. Wilson, recalled that acting during the whole Session upon all questions asa unit, gave them a Strength and influence that enabled them to carry through their measures,and give efficient aid to their friends.ccclvii Governor Thomas Ford alleged that theSangamon County delegation, whose ranks included some dexterous jugglers and managersin politics, during the entire session threw itself as a unit in support of or opposition toevery local measure of interest, but never without a bargain for votes in return on the seat ofgovernment question. Most of the other counties were small, having but one representative,and many of them with but one for a whole district; and this gave Sangamo county a decided

cccliv John Reynolds, My Own Times, Embracing Also the History of My Life (Chicago: Fergus, 1879), 324.ccclv William Brown to Jeremiah Brown, Jr., Vandalia, 4 December 1834, typed copy, Jesse W. Fell Papers,Library of Congress.ccclvi John J. Hardin to Sarah Smith Hardin, Vandalia, 26 February 1837, Hardin Family Papers, ChicagoHistory Museum; Beveridge, Lincoln, 1:178; Simon, Lincolns Preparation for Greatness, 59; Baringer,Lincolns Vandalia, 85.ccclvii Wilson to Herndon, Sterling, Illinois, 10 February 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Informants,204. Paul Simon showed that the Long Nine did not always vote as a unit. Lincolns Preparation for Greatness,83. Rodney O. Davis drew more reasonable inferences from this pattern of bloc voting than did Simon. Davis,Illinois General Assembly, 17-18. Davis examined thirty-two key roll call votes on the internal improvementsplan, which show strong cohesion, if not perfect unanimity, among the House members of the Long Nine. Ofthose, he found that Lincoln voted pro-improvements thirty times, Ninian Edwards thirty-one times, WilliamElkin twenty-nine times, John Dawson twenty-five times, Andrew McCormick twenty-six times, Robert Wilsontwenty-six times, and Dan Stone (who was frequently absent) eighteen times. Davis to the author, personalcommunication, 17 February 1998. The Long Nine acted as a unanimous bloc on fifteen of the twenty-fourrecorded votes on the bill to establish and maintain a general system of internal improvements.

382

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

preponderance in the log-rolling system of those days. By using such means the longnine rolled along like a snow-ball, gathering accession of strength at every turn until theyswelled up a considerable party for Springfield, which party they managed to take almost asa unit in favor of the internal improvement system, in return for which the active supportersof that system were to vote for Springfield to be the seat of government.ccclviii

ccclviii Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 127. One historian, evidently regarding such bargains as sinister,denied that Lincoln made any. Simon, Lincolns Preparation for Greatness, 76-105. For a thoughtful discussionof the difference between logrolling and corruption, see Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation:Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 181-82.Simons conclusions have been persuasively challenged by Rodney O. Davis, Illinois General Assembly, 1618. Before Simons book appeared, most historians accepted Governor Fords version of the log-rolling story.Clinton L. Conkling said that the members from any given locality were ready to trade or log roll for votesfavoring the construction of a railroad, canal or mail route through their own particular county. The membersfrom Sangamon County gave their special attention to securing votes for the selection of Springfield as thecapital. This singleness of purpose, with help judiciously given to others in the advancement of their projects,produced a favorable impression for Springfield . . . . While the internal improvement bill was pending theLong Nine were busy. They said little or nothing in reference to locating proposed railroads, but would assistother localities, where votes could be secured for locating the capital at Springfield. Conkling, Movement fora Third Capital, in Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, vol. II, part 1(Chicago: Munsell, 1912), 646-47. John Moses concurred: The single measure, to the success of which thelong nine bent all their energies, was the permanent location of the capital at Springfield. They had no favoriteroute for a railroad, and were thus left perfectly untrammeled to assist and promote the pet schemes of others,who were willing to reciprocate in kind. Nine solid votes would go far toward turning the scale in favor of anyclose question, and were always thrown where they would accomplish the most satisfactory results. . . . The factthat the internal-improvement and canal schemes, and that for the removal of the seat of government, weremade to support each other, secured many votes for each which it might not have been able to obtain on its ownmerits. The friends of the canal were menaced with defeat if they failed to support the general-improvementbill, while the promoters of the latter threatened to withhold support from the canal unless their measure wentthrough. The counties which failed to secure any railroads or canals were placated with the promise of$200,000, to be divided among them according to population. The long nine in the meantime stood ready onall occasions to apply their strength where the most valuable returns might be obtained. Moses, Illinois, 1:41213. In 1857, Fred Gerhard offered a similar account: Private interests, intrigues, and corruption, had beenactively at work to ensure the adoption of this system. Thus it was, that . . . politicians, who were anxious tohave the seat of government removed to Springfield from Vandalia, would support or oppose any scheme ofimprovement, if they could or could not obtain votes in favor of the removal of the seat of government toSpringfield in return for it. Gerhard, Illinois As It Is (Chicago: Keen and Lee, 1857), 84. John F. Snyderclaimed that the Long Nine succeeded by log rolling with their friends of every other measure presented; orthreatening to withhold their support from the same, the canal and other internal improvements especially; andby the practice of all arts of persuasion and coercion known to influence recalcitrant, or indifferent, members.John F. Snyder, Adam W. Snyder and His Period in Illinois History, 1817-1842 (2nd ed., rev.; Virginia, Illinois:E. Needham, 1906), 221. John H. Krenkel, however, concluded that the evidence on the connection betweenthe internal improvement system and the location of the seat of government is . . . inconclusive. Krenkel,Illinois Internal Improvements, 73. Both Krenkel and Simon ignored or discounted the testimony of trustworthyfirst-hand observers like Stephen T. Logan, Robert L. Wilson, Jesse K. Dubois, Richard S. Walker, Edwin B.Webb, Christian B. Blockburger, John McCown and William L. D. Ewing, as well as the commonunderstanding of the day that legislation was passed by a process of bargaining and trade.

383

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Throughout December and January, as legislative business was progressing very

slowly, the Long Nine cultivated friends by promising support for internal improvementprojects tailored to needs of each county.ccclix (The bill that was eventually adopted, fundingmany more projects than the committee which drafted it had recommended, directlybenefited forty-four of the states sixty counties; the other sixteen received cash grants.)Representative Richard S. Walker from Morgan County complained of the bargain and salethat was brought about to make Springfield the successful candidate.ccclx In 1838, theleading Whig paper in that county declared that the internal improvement legislation wascarried through the Legislature by bargain and trade. It was a perfect log-rolling affair, andwas avowed to be such by many of its supporters.ccclxi In 1844, an editor of that paper, JohnJ. Hardin, told the U.S. House of Representatives during a debate on an internalimprovements bill, I do not wish to enter into a system of log-rolling to carry through thismeasure. I have seen the evils of that system carried to the extreme in the legislation of myown State; and we are now suffering too severely from its unfortunate results, for me to bewilling to see it adopted here.ccclxii Vandalias champion, William L. D. Ewing, decried thefoul corruption by which the seat of Government, contrary to justice and the constitution,was removed to Springfield.ccclxiii He contended that the law had been passed by chicaneryand trickery, and that the Long Nine had sold out to the internal improvement men, and

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

had promised their support to every measure that would gain them a vote to the lawremoving the seat of government.ccclxiv In July 1838, State Representative Christian B.Blockburger reported witnessing the Long Nine acting in firm and united phalanxthroughout the whole session on this subject. I saw the dangerous influence their numbersenabled them to exert. I saw how votes were swapped off and exchanged, and how quicklythe local measures of other members were voted for, when Springfield could receive a votein return.ccclxv That same month, a dozen others joined Ewing and Blockberger in deploringthe machinations of the Long Nine: Having staked their all upon this one measure, andhaving so strong a delegation to act upon the system of log rolling, it was not difficult forthem to secure the votes of members who felt but little interested in the subject. Every art,device, and argument that could possibly be used to gain votes were resorted to.ccclxvi In1843, a shrewd observer of Sangamon County politics declared that the internalimprovements law and all its sad consequences, are more justly attributed to the logrolling of the LONG NINE, than any other men or set of men.ccclxvii Lincolns friend andpolitical ally George T. M. Davis, editor of the Alton Telegraph, alleged that Springfield waschosen capital as a portion of the quid pro quo in securing the passage of the InternalImprovement system through the Legislature by the use of the basest stratagem andintrigue.ccclxviii In 1846, the Springfield Illinois State Register said Lincoln was one of the

ccclxiv Linder, Reminiscences, 62.

ccclxv Statement made at a public meeting, Vandalia, 7 July, Illinois State Register (Vandalia), 20 July 1838.Blockburger (1790-1845) had served as the probate justice of the peace as well as a state representative fromMontgomery County. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 5 September 1845.ccclxvi Statement by a committee headed by N. M. McCurdy, Vandalia, July 1838, Illinois State Register(Vandalia), 10 August 1838.ccclxvii Letter by Oregon, Illinois State Register (Springfield), 22 September 1843.ccclxviii Removal of the Seat of Government, Alton Telegraph & Democratic Review, 24 May 1845.

385

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

long nine, but for whom it [the internal improvements plan] never could have passed into alaw: the State House at Springfield being the consideration for which they gave their votes,as we have always understood.ccclxixLegislators also favored the internal improvements scheme because of patronageconsiderations. One observer noted that the statute would never have passed had it not beenfor the multitude of new offices which it created, and the confident expectation that thefriends of the measure [in the legislature] would fill those offices. Shortly after the adoptionof the statute, the chairman of the committee who reported the bill to the legislaturereceived an office under the law with a salary of three thousand dollars a year. Most of themen appointed to the board of public works were party leaders who had never beenconspicuous for any thing but their blind devotion to the dominant party. None had theleast experience in the important duties assigned them, but because they had donesomething for the party, they had to be provided for, and if they knew nothing else, theyknew that they got good salaries, and that was of course satisfactory.ccclxx A case in pointwas Democrat John J. McClernand, who broke with his party to support the measure and as areward was named treasurer of the Illinois and Michigan canal.ccclxxiLincoln acknowledged openly that he had engaged in log rolling. In 1839, theVandalia Free Press, a Whig newspaper, said: Lincoln admitted that Sangamon county hadreceived great and important benefits, at the last session of the Legislature, in return forgiving support, thro her delegation to the system of Internal Improvement; and that though

ccclxix The Late Gov. Duncan, Illinois State Register (Springfield), 15 May 1846.ccclxx Internal Improvements, No. VI, by E[dson] H[arkness], Peoria Register and North-Western Gazette, 8September 1838.ccclxxi Victor Hicken, From Vandalia to Vicksburg: The Political and Military Career of John A.McClernand (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1955), 12.

386

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

not legally bound, she is morally bound, to adhere to that system, through all time tocome!ccclxxii Another Vandalia journal, perhaps describing the same remarks, alleged thatone night during the 1838-39 legislative session, Lincoln and Edward D. Baker clashed overthe internal improvements system. After Baker pronounced himself against the system,Lincoln replied tartly to his colleague that he for himself and every other Representative ofSangamon county, present and future, should forever support the system of internalimprovements because the Sangamon delegation had obtained the seat of Government atSpringfield by an understanding with the friends of the system. Mr. L. said he considered thepledges then made as forever binding, not only on him but on Sangamon county itself.ccclxxiiiThe work of the Long Nine did not proceed smoothly. As Lincoln remarked elevenyears later, the subject of internal improvements was fraught with difficulty because it wasimpossible to please everyone: One man is offended because a road passes over his land,and another is offended because it does not pass over his; one is dissatisfied because thebridge, for which he is taxed, crosses the river on a different road from that which leads from

ccclxxii Vandalia Free Press, 21 February 1839, in Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:144.ccclxxiii Mr. Lincoln, Illinois State Register (Vandalia), 5 April 1839. That editorial began thus: The lastIllinois Republican [the Democratic paper in Springfield] contains a letter of A. Lincoln . . . and somecomments thereon, concerning a remark attributed to Mr. L. in reference to the internal improvement system.As we understand it, this controversy has grown out of a very remarkable night scene which occurred in theHouse of Representatives at its late session, at which some astonishing developments were made, but which, incharity, we then forbore to publish. When the Sangamo Journal denied that Lincoln had made such remarks,the Illinois State Register replied that the statement we published will certainly stand as true in everyparticular, until the Journal publishes the account which Mr. Lincoln himself gives of the extraordinary debatein question. We presume Mr. Lincoln will not deny that a warm conversation did occur in the House betweenhim, Mr. Baker, Mr. Hardin, and some others, in reference to certain pledges which Mr. Lincoln said he and hiscolleagues were under to support the internal improvement system. This conversation was a subject of generalremark next day in Vandalia. There is no doubt it did occur, as the whole house was a witness to it. Mr. Lincolnsaid he was under solemn pledges to support the system, and most emphatically called down heavypunishments upon himself if he should violate those pledges. His object appeared to be, to convince Mr. Bakerand Mr. Calhoun, that they, as delegates of Sangamon, were equally bound with himself to fulfill the pledge.Illinois State Register (Vandalia), 3 May 1839. (The Sangamo Journal probably ran its denial in the issue of 19April 1839, which is missing from the microfilmed file of that newspaper.) See also The Long Nine TheInternal Improvement System The Special Session, and Broken Pledges, Illinois State Journal(Springfield), 9 November 1839 and 8 January 1840.

387

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

his house to town; another can not bear that the county should be got in debt for these sameroads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard to have roads located over their lands, andthen stoutly refuse to let them be opened until they are first paid the damages. Even betweenthe different wards, and streets, of towns and cities, we find this same wrangling, anddifficulty.ccclxxiv Resistance to the internal improvement scheme was led by fiscalconservatives opposed, as a matter of principle, to incurring a public debt for suchpurposes. They believed that private funds, not tax dollars, should underwrite river andharbor improvements, railroads, canals, and turnpikes. Some old fogies were opposed torailroads for the reason that they would be too destructive of timber, believing that the roadswere made of split wooden rails laid closely together corduroy fashion!ccclxxvOn December 13, 1836, a further threat to the Long Nine emerged when John Taylorof Springfield submitted a petition to divide Sangamon County.ccclxxvi Taylor and hislieutenant, John Calhoun, had speculated in land which they hoped would become countyseats and thus appreciate in value.ccclxxvii (If a town became a county seat, it would havesocial and political prestige and preferential treatment in roads, public buildings, and countyjobs. It also meant that a town would have a county fair . . . as well as be able to attract retail

ccclxxiv Speech of 20 June 1848 in the U.S. House of Representatives, Basler, ed., Collected Works ofLincoln, 1:488-89.ccclxxv Snyder, Adam W. Snyder, 200.ccclxxvi Lincoln to Mary Owens, Vandalia, 13 December 1836, Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:5455; John Taylor to William Walters, Vandalia, 8 February 1837, Illinois State Register (Vandalia), 13 February1837.ccclxxvii Pratt, Lincoln and the Division of Sangamon County, 400-1; The Seat of Government, SangamoJournal, 21 July 1838; Robert L. Wilson to C. R. Matheny, Vandalia, 31 December 1836, Sangamo Journal, 8July 1837; undated, unsigned letter to the voters of Sangamon County, Sangamo Journal, 1 July 1837; editorial,The Election This Day, ibid.; letter by Sangamon, ibid., 4 August 1838. Taylor owned most of the town ofPetersburg, which in 1839 became the county seat of the newly-created county of Menard, carved fromSangamon.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

388

business.)ccclxxviii In addition, Taylor and others had bought up land at the geographicalcenter of the state, a locale which they named Illiopolis and hoped to make the capital.ccclxxixNot wanting to see the delegation reduced in size while it was seeking votes to makeSpringfield the capital, Lincoln adopted delaying tactics, urging that the question bepostponed until Springfield had achieved its goal.ccclxxx When signatures on a petitionfavoring division of the county proved fraudulent, the measure failed.ccclxxxi In late January1837, another attempt to divide the county was made, which was condemned at a massmeeting in Springfield.ccclxxxii Soon thereafter, Springfields champions submitted aremonstrance bearing more signatures than the original petition, thus killing theproposal.ccclxxxiiiOther crises soon arose. Jesse K. Dubois, a fellow legislator who became Lincolnsgood friend, recalled that Lincoln came to my room one evening and told me that he waswhipped that his career was ended that he had traded off everything he could dispose of,and still had not got strength enough to locate the seat of government at Springfield. Yet, hesaid, I can[]t go home without passing that bill. My folks expect that of me, and that I

ccclxxviii Robert E. Norris and Haring L. Lloyd, Political Geography (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill,1980), 198.ccclxxix William Butler recalled that Duncan and others had bought about 1200 acres of land out here atIlliopolis 16 miles east of here [Springfield], and had laid out a town there, and were trying to have that madethe capital. William Butler, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 13 June 1875, Burlingame, ed., OralHistory of Lincoln, 21.ccclxxx Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:55-57; Pratt, Lincoln and the Division of SangamonCounty, 400-1.ccclxxxi Sangamo Journal, 4 August 1838; Pratt, Lincoln and the Division of Sangamon County, 401-3;Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 93-97; Van Meter, Always My Friend, 55.ccclxxxii Sangamo Journal, 4 February 1837.ccclxxxiii Sangamo Journal, 25 February 1837.

389

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

can[]t do and I am finished forever.ccclxxxiv Robert L. Wilson of the Long Nine alsoremembered discouraging moments: The contest on this Bill was long, and severe; itsenemies laid it on the table twice, once on the table till the fourth day of July and onceindefinitely postponed it. Removing bills from the table is always attended with difficulty;but when laid on the table to a day beyond the Session, or when indefinitely postponed, [it]requires a vote of reconsideration, which always is an intense Struggle. In these dark hours,when our Bill to all appearance was beyond recussitation, and all our opponents werejubilant over our defeat, and when friends could see no hope, Mr Lincoln never for onemoment despaired, but collect[ed] his Colleagues to his room for consultation. Hispractical common Sense, his thorough knowledge of human nature then, made him anovermatch for his compeers and for any man that I have ever known.ccclxxxvOn February 17, the motion to table the bill passed 39 to 38; four days later it wastaken off the table. A key swing vote was cast by Edward Smith of Wabash County, anengineer who championed the internal improvements scheme, which passed the legislatureon February 23. Two days later, the council of revision (consisting of the governor and thestate supreme court) refused to approve that bill; Smiths decision to change his vote mayhave been influenced by his fear that the House of Representatives would not override thecouncils action. He probably struck a deal with the Long Nine to support the removal of thecapital to Springfield in return for the Long Nines votes to secure final passage of theccclxxxiv Dubois, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 4 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 31. Dubois offered some recommendations: first pass the bill to move the seat of government, andSpringfield, Jacksonville, Peoria, and every other town that expects to get the seat of government will vote forthat bill, Vandalia alone excepted. Then pass a joint resolution, locating the seat of government, and forbeginning a suitable building so as to have it ready by the time provided in the Constitution for moving it.Lincoln allegedly replied, By jings, I reckon that will do it. That night he had a bill ready, Dubois recalled,and we passed it. When we went into joint session the other fellows saw the trap, but it was too late. Wecarried the measure for Springfield. Ibid.

390

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

internal improvements measure.ccclxxxvi Opponents of the internal improvements system

claimed that its supporters found out the price of certain members and bought up enoughvotes to pass it.ccclxxxvii The councils veto was overridden, and the bill to move the capital toSpringfield passed on February 28.Thus ended a hard-fought battle. Robert L. Wilson and another legislator, Henry L.Webb of Alexander County, reported that on several occasions their opponents deemed thatthey had circumvented the movement, and incautious ones crowed lustily over the supposeddefeat and discomfiture of Lincoln and his colleagues. Some pessimists among the LongNine supposed the measure was lost, but Lincoln was tenacious and resolute. Hisunexpected flanking movements would revive their chances. Thus under his adroitleadership, the bill was carried, although the only political strength in its favor at the startwas seven votes in the house [of representatives] and two in the other [house], with nonatural allies, and several delegations of active enemies. The passage of the bill was felt tobe one of the greatest of political triumphs, and its credit was freely ascribed to Lincoln.Wilson maintained that had Lincoln not been there, it would have failed.ccclxxxviiiLincolns most important maneuver may have been an amendment he offered onFebruary 24, stipulating that the legislature reserves the right to repeal this act at any timehereafter.ccclxxxix This tautological measure won the support of four legislators who had

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

previously been in opposition. As amended, the bill was adopted that same day, facilitatingSpringfields victory.cccxc Helping expedite that choice was another amendment suggested byLincoln and formally introduced by Alexander P. Dunbar, requiring the town selected as thecapital to donate two acres of land and pay $50,000 to help cover the cost of a newstatehouse. This measure, which virtually eliminated the smaller towns from competition,passed 53-26.cccxciBy the end of February, when balloting for the removal of the capital took place, theLong Nine had cobbled together an alliance of twenty-three legislators who lived in or nearSangamon County; nine who represented counties which would benefit substantially fromthe internal improvements bill that had just passed; and three who fit neither category.cccxciiTwo of those three unclassifiable representatives were Jesse K. Dubois and Henry L. Webb,friends of Lincoln who wanted to accommodate him. Dubois later said that Lincoln madeWebb and me vote for his scheme to move the rest of government to Springfield. Webelonged to the southern end of the State, where proposals to remove the capital northwardwere unpopular. We defended our vote before our constituents by saying that necessitywould ultimately force the seat of government to a central position. But in reality we gavethe vote to Lincoln because we liked him and because we wanted to oblige our friend, andbecause we recognized his authority as our leader.cccxciii Webb called the legislative triumphcccxc House Journal, 1836-37, 702-3; Davis, Lincoln and the Illinois General Assembly, 17-18. The fourswing votes were James Shields, Francis Voris, George Hinshaw, and Alpheus Wheeler. The vote on theamendment was 43-41; the vote on the bill as amended was 46-37. The Alton representatives were allegedlymad at Vandalia because voters of that town had supported a move to extend the National Road from the capitalto St. Louis rather than Alton. They therefore threw their support to Springfield to spite Vandalia when itbecame clear that Alton would not itself win the capital sweepstakes. Historical Souvenir of Vandalia, 17-18.cccxci Simon, Lincolns Preparation for Greatness, 58.cccxcii Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 108.cccxciii Dubois, interview with John G. Nicolay, Springfield, 4 July 1875, Burlingame, ed., Oral History ofLincoln, 30.

392

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

of the Long Nine the master stroke of diplomacy of the Western Hemisphere and deemedLincoln a Napoleon of astuteness and political finesse. According to Henry C. Whitney,Webb voted for the measure because of his admiration of Lincoln and the inability to resisthis importunities. His [original] policy was to leave the capital at Vandalia but yielded toLincoln.cccxciv (Jason Duncan was so impressed by Lincolns political skills that he oftensaid he would not be surprised if Abe Lincoln got to be governor of Illinois.)cccxcv Thesethirty-five votes made Springfield the clear front runner; on the first ballot, Vandalia andPeoria each received only sixteen votes, Alton fifteen, Jacksonville fourteen, and Decaturfour. On the second ballot, Springfield picked up nine more votes. On the third, its total againswelled by nine. On the fourth and final ballot, twenty more legislators sided withSpringfield, putting it over the top.cccxcviIn the joyful celebration of this victory, Lincoln was toasted as one of Nature[]sNoblemen.cccxcvii Robert L. Wilson thought that if any man was entitled to that complimentit was he.cccxcviii Orville H. Browning praised the Long Nine: It was to their judiciousmanagement, their ability, their gentlemanly deportment, their unassuming manners, theirconstant and untiring labor that Springfield owed its success.cccxcix Echoing Browning,

cccxciv Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, manuscript version, 174, Lincoln Memorial University,Harrogate, Tennessee. This passage was omitted from the published edition of Whitneys biography. Henry L.Webb (1795-1876) was a younger brother of James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier andEnquirer. He settled near Cairo, Illinois, and served several terms in the state legislature. He was an officer inthe Black Hawk War and the Mexican War. In 1852, he moved to Virginia, Illinois, where Whitney got toknow him. Ibid.cccxcv Statement by Daniel Green Burner, brother-in-law of Duncan, for J. McCan Davis, 1895, in J. McCanDavis, How Lincoln Became President (Springfield: The Illinois Company, 1909), 21.cccxcvi Baringer, Lincolns Vandalia, 108-9.cccxcvii Sangamo Journal, 29 July 1837.cccxcviii Wilson to Herndon, Sterling, Illinois, 10 February 1866, Wilson and Davis, eds., HerndonsInformants, 206.cccxcix Sangamo Journal, 29 July 1837.

393

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

William Pickering commended Lincoln for his continuously moral and self-reliantconduct, which formed a striking contrast with the general manners of nearly all by whomhe was surrounded, and with whom he mingled all the time[,] for Strong language and Strongdrink, were almost universally prevalent, in that early age of Legislation but I never heardMr. Lincoln use a profane expression, in his own conversation, nor did I ever know him tomake use of any stimulating liquid of any kind but he was always as cheerful as any manwho most constantly made use of the strongest beverage so very fashionable in that age.cdNor did Lincoln distribute money to win votes. According to Joshua Speed, he was given$200 to dispense while promoting the internal improvements project, but only used 75,explaining afterwards, I didnt Know how to Spend it.cdiHelping Lincoln and the other members of the Long Nine in their efforts to round upvotes was William Butler, who later told an interviewer: I was sent down to Vandalia towork in the interest of Springfield. [Peter] Van Bergen was also sent down there with me though he did no good but to hear him tell it he did it all. Lincoln and [Usher F.] Linderwere the two principal men we relied on in the Legislature to make speeches for us. John T.Stuart was the man we depended upon in caucus. Lincoln was not worth a cent in caucus.cdiiNot all of Lincolns friends praised him for effecting the transfer of the capital toSpringfield. Several of them presciently foresaw that the internal improvements scheme wasfar too ambitious for the meager resources of the new state and was therefore bound to

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

fail.cdiii Among the skeptics was Stephen T. Logan, who recalled that I was in Vandalia thatwinter and had a talk with Lincoln there. I remember that I took him to task for voting for theInternal Improvement scheme. He seemed to acquiesce in the correctness of my views as Ipresented them to him. But he said he couldnt help himself he had to vote for it in order tosecure the removal here of the seat of government.cdiv Usher F. Linder, who regretted hissupport for the system, apologetically explained many years later that at the time he, Lincolnand other enthusiasts were all young and inexperienced men.cdvNo such misgivings were voiced when the internal improvements bill passed, anachievement attributable in part to the able leadership of Democrat John A. McClernand.cdviA dispatch from the capital, probably by Lincoln, described the jubilation: the huzzas andacclamations of the people were unprecedented. All Vandalia was illuminated. Bonfireswere built, and fire balls were thrown, in every direction.cdvii Paying for the system wouldbe simple, according to Representative John Hogan, a fluent and interesting speaker whomaintained that instead of there being any difficulty in obtaining a loan of the fifteen ortwenty millions authorized to be borrowed, the bonds would go like hot cakes, and besought for by the Rothschilds and Baring Brothers, and that the premium which we wouldobtain upon them would range from fifty to one hundred per cent., which by itself would

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

be sufficient to construct most of the important works, leaving the principal sum to go intoour treasury, and leave the people free from taxation for years to come.cdviiiHogans rosy scenario proved wildly inaccurate. Lincolns leadership in the capitaltransfer struggle benefited Springfield at the expense of Illinois. Governor Thomas Forddeclared that by giving the seat of government to Springfield was the whole State bought upand bribed to approve the most senseless and disastrous policy which ever crippled theenergies of a growing country.cdix In 1832, Lincoln had sensibly warned voters about theheart-appalling costs of railroads and canals. Four years later he cavalierly ignored his owngood advice and that of friends like Stephen T. Logan, Orville H. Browning, John J. Hardin,Alexander P. Field, and Edwin B. Webb, thus helping saddle Illinois with a $14,000,000system of internal improvements that its population of 500,000 could ill afford.cdx Among theinternal improvements were the laying 1300 miles of railroads, deepening the channels offive rivers, constructing a mail route from Vincennes to St. Louis, and awarding $200,000 tocompensate the counties through which neither canal nor railroad would pass.cdxi The intereston the necessary loans exceeded the entire revenue raised by the state in 1836.cdxii When theeconomy collapsed in 1837, any slight chance that the state could pay for the many projectscdviii Linder, Reminiscences, 59-60.cdix Ford, History of Illinois, ed. Davis, 127.cdx Browning to the citizens of Adams County, Quincy, 10 February, Quincy Whig, 15 February 1840; Baxter,Browning, 11-12, 25-26; Stevens, Alexander Pope Field, 24-25; formal protest by Webb and Senator JohnMcCowan, House Journal, 1836-37, 680-83 (23 February 1837). On 11 December 1840, Hardin said that hehad always been opposed to the system. Remarks in the Illinois General Assembly, Illinois State Register(Springfield), 18 December 1840. Two years earlier, he wrote that he had favored an internal improvementssystem far more modest than the one adopted: I wanted a system adapted to our wants and resources not onelike ours, which embraced more Rail-Roads than was ever undertaken by a single State or Nation in the world.Hardin, Internal Improvements, Jacksonville Illinoisan, 9 June 1838. In the House, Hardin led the oppositionforces. John A. McClernand to Henry Eddy, Vandalia, 2 February 1837, Eddy Papers, Lincoln PresidentialLibrary, Springfield.cdxi Krenkel, Illinois Internal Improvements, 47-76.cdxii Pratt, Lincoln in the Legislature, 8.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

396

went glimmering. Illinois suspended interest payments on its debt, and for years thereafter itscredit rating was poor and its treasury strapped. The state became a stench in the nostrils ofthe civilized world.cdxiii In 1843, John Todd Stuart complained: Our reputation is verymuch that of a set of swindlers.cdxiv Only in 1880 did Illinois finally pay off the loansincurred for the internal improvement system.cdxvWhen the General Assembly voted to increase its members pay from $3 per day to$4, protests arose. One indignant constituent, a blunt, hard-working yeoman, beratedLincoln, for he could and would not understand why men should be paid four dollars perday for doing nothing but talking and sitting on benches, while he averaged only about one[dollar] for the hardest kind of work. He asked angrily, what in the world made you do it?Lincoln replied: I reckon the only reason was that we wanted the money.cdxviIn addition to passing the internal improvements bill, the statute removing the capitalto Springfield, and the pay hike, the legislature continued its routine work of incorporatingbusinesses, schools, and towns; of authorizing roads and declaring streams navigable; anddefining the boundaries of counties. Lincoln participated in these matters, answering all butseventeen of the 220 roll calls taken during the first session of the Tenth GeneralAssembly.cdxvii

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Between the time that he declared his candidacy in 1832 and his triumph as thechampion of Springfields bid to become the state capital, Lincoln had become an adeptpartisan, renowned for log rolling and insulting Democrats, but little more.cdxviii The daybefore the General Assembly adjourned, however, he took a step that foreshadowed thestatesmanship of his more mature years.On March 3, 1837, he and another member of the Long Nine (Dan Stone) filed aprotest against anti-abolitionist resolutions that the legislature had adopted six weeks earlierby the lopsided vote of 77-6 in the House and 18-0 in the senate. The tiny minority opposedto the resolutions, comprising less than 7% of the entire General Assembly, included Lincolnand Stone.cdxix Those overwhelmingly popular resolutions, introduced at the behest ofSouthern state legislatures which were outraged by the American Anti-Slavery Societyspamphlets depicting slave owners as cruel brutes and by a massive petition drive calling forthe abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, declared that Illinois legislators highlydisapprove of the formation of abolition societies, and of the doctrines promulgated bythem, that the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-holding States by theFederal Government, and that they cannot be deprived of that right without their consent,and that the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, againstthe will of the citizens of said District without a manifest breach of good faith.cdxxcdxvii Horner, Education of a Politician, 129.cdxviii Horace White, Introduction, William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The TrueStory of a Great Life (2 vols.; New York: Appleton, 1909), 1:xxi-xxii; Joel Silbey, Always a Whig inPolitics: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 8 (1986): 21-42.cdxix The other representatives joining Lincoln and Stone were Andrew McCormick of Sangamon County,Gideon Minor of Edgar County, John H. Murphy of Vermilion County, and Parvin Paullen of Pike County.House Journal, 1836-1837, 311.cdxx House Journal, 1836-37, 241-44. The resolutions were debated and may have been slightly amended, butthe House Journal does not describe those changes. Because there was evidently little debate, such alterationswere probably minimal.

398

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Lincoln wrote a protest and circulated it among his colleagues, all of whomrefused to sign except for Stone, a native of Vermont and a graduate of Middlebury College.Stone was not seeking reelection because he would soon become a judge.cdxxi Lincolndeclared in the document which he and Stone spread on the journal of the House ofRepresentatives that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy,foreshadowing his great 1854 Peoria speech denouncing the monstrous injustice of slavery.In 1860, a newspaper widely regarded as his organ explained that Lincoln could not, anddid not vote in favor of the resolutions . . . because the old Calhoun doctrine embraced in thesecond of the series [that the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave-holding statesby the Federal Government] was abhorrent to his ideas of the true meaning of theConstitution.cdxxiiTo announce that slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy was aremarkably bold gesture for 1837, when antislavery views enjoyed little popularity in centralIllinois or elsewhere in the nation.cdxxiii Several months after Lincoln and Stone issued

cdxxi Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:74-75; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: AHistory (10 vols.; New York: Century, 1890), 1:151; Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndons Lincoln, 119-20. In1860, Lincoln said in a third-person autobiographical reminiscence that he placed upon the . . . Journal, hisown views upon the subject, in his own well considered language. Fragment of an answer to John Hill,[September 1860?], Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 4:108. On Dan Stone, see John Carroll Power,History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 690; PameliaS. Powell to Harry E. Pratt, Middlebury, Vermont, 8 April 1942; Eleanor S. Wilby to Harry E. Pratt, Cincinnati,13 and 25 April 1942, reference files of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Lincoln Presidential Library,Springfield. The delay between the vote on the resolutions in January and the introduction of the protest inMarch was probably due to the signers wish to avoid offending legislators while the question of removing thestate capital was still pending. That matter had finally been resolved on February 28.cdxxii Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 25 August 1860.cdxxiii Indeed, as Ward Hill Lamons biography of Lincoln noted, it required uncommon courage and candorin the day and generation in which it was done. Lamon, Lincoln, 201. For a thoughtful, extensive discussion ofthe Lincoln-Stone protest, see William Lee Miller, Lincolns Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York:Knopf, 2002), 116-29. The Illinois State Register claimed that Lincoln and Stone issued their protest as a wayof backing down from the vote they had earlier cast regarding abolitionism. Lincoln had heard from home. HisSangamon constituency were outraged at his vote, and he and Stone, both aspirants for future political honors,trumped up the protest. Illinois State Register (Springfield), 28 August 1860. No contemporary evidencesupports this theory. Stone was not seeking reelection. On the unpopularity of abolitionism, see Litwack, North

399

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

their protest, the quasi-Democratic governor of Illinois, Joseph Duncan, speaking for manyof his constituents, denounced all efforts to agitate the question of abolishing slavery in thiscountry, for it can never be broached without producing violence and discord, whether it bein a free or slave State. Duncan added that if I read my Bible right, which enjoins peaceand good-will as the first Christian duties, it must be wicked and sinful to agitate this subjectin the manner it has been done by some Abolitionists, especially after our Southernneighbors have repeatedly and earnestly appealed to us not to meddle with it, and assured ustheir having done so has not only jeopardised their own safety and domestic peace, but inmany cases has caused bloodshed and rebellion, which has compelled them, as a measure ofprudence and protection, to use more rigidity and severity with their slaves. Abolitionwithout the consent of the Southern states would violate the Constitution, Duncan argued. Hebelieved that it will neither be consistent with sound policy or humanity by a single effort tofree all the slaves in the Union, ignorant, vicious, and degraded as they are known to be, andthen turn them loose upon the world without their possessing the least qualification for civilgovernment, or knowledge of the value of property, or the use of liberty.cdxxiv

of Slavery; Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in JacksonianAmerica (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery:Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press),1967; Linda K. Kerber, Abolitionists and Amalgamators: The New York City Race Riots of 1834, New YorkHistory 48 (1967): 28-39; John Runcie, Hunting the Nigs in Philadelphia: The Race Riot of August 1834,Pennsylvania History 39 (1972): 187-218; Lorman Ratner, Powder Keg: Northern Opposition to theAntislavery Movement, 1830-1840 (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Joel H. Silbey, Pro-Slavery Sentiment inIowa, 1838-1861, Iowa Journal of History 55 (1957): 289-318; Gilbert Osofsky, Abolitionists, IrishImmigrants and the Dilemmas of Romantic Nationalism, American Historical Review 80 (1975): 889-97;Morton M. Rosenberg and Dennis V. McClurg, The Politics of Pro-Slavery Sentiment in Indiana, 1816-1861(Muncie, Indiana: Ball State University, 1968); Gerald S. Henig, The Jacksonian Attitude toward Abolitionismin the 1830s, Tennessee Historical Quarterly 28 (1969): 42-56; Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of theDefense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987); Murray E.Heimbinder, Northern Men with Southern Principles: A Study of the Doughfaces of New York and NewEngland (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1971); Gossett, Race.cdxxiv Duncan explained that I was born and lived more than half my life in a slave State [Kentucky], longenough to be convinced that the degraded condition of the slave and slavery itself is a great moral and politicalevil, and we should earnestly implore God to open the way by which they may be enlightened and improved intheir condition, and, when prepared to enjoy it, and it can be done without violating the constitution, the peace

400

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Political leaders outside of Illinois held similar views. Henry Clay, Lincolns beauideal of a statesman, condemned abolitionists as extremely mischievous firebrands whowould see the administration of the Government precipitate the nation into absolute ruinand nullify the Constitution. He predicted that if they are not checked in their progress,the day would come when the free States will have to decide on the alternative ofrepudiating them or repudiating the Union.cdxxv In 1836, Massachusetts governor EdwardEverett urged the state legislature to outlaw abolitionists, arguing that Everything that tendsto disturb the relations created by this compact [i.e., the Constitution] is at war with its spirit,and whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an insurrection amongthe slaves has been held by highly respectable legal authority an offence against the peace ofthis Commonwealth.cdxxvi New York Governor William L. Marcy, who called abolitionistssinister, reckless agitators, advised his legislature that it might behoove the Free States toprovide for the trial and punishment by their own judicatories, of residents within theirlimits, guilty of acts therein, which are calculated to excite insurrection and rebellion in asister State.cdxxvii

and union of the State, we should pray to see them all set at liberty. Duncan to Gideon Blackburn,Jacksonville, 12 December 1837, Julia Duncan Kirby, Biographical Sketch of Joseph Duncan, Fifth Governorof Illinois (pamphlet; Fergus Historical Series, no. 29; Chicago: Fergus, 1888), 50-51. When asked to supportIllinois College, a hotbed of abolitionism, Duncan replied: Believing that it is wrong, morally and politically,for any citizen or public institution to teach or advocate doctrines or principles in this country which can not becarried into practice peaceably without violating the constitution of the United States, or forcibly, without civilwar, the risk of disunion, and the destruction of our free and happy government, I can not with my presentconvictions of the course pursued by its faculty, consistently hold any connection with this institution. Duncanto Samuel D. Lockwood, Jacksonville, 10 October 1838, ibid., 54.cdxxv Clay to Calvin Colton, Lexington, 2 September 1843 and to John Sloane, Lexington, 27 October 1843,James F. Hopkins et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Clay (11 vols.; Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,1959-92), 9:852, 874.cdxxvi Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward Everett: Orator and Statesman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925),132.cdxxvii Albany Argus, 7 January 1837, quoted in Ratner, Powder Keg, 72; Marcy, message of 5 January 1836,quoted in Ivor Debenham Spencer, The Victor and the Spoils: A Life of William L. Marcy (Providence: BrownUniversity Press, 1959), 104.

401

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Seven months after Lincoln and Stone issued their protest, when the Presbyteriansynod gathered in Springfield, the town residents publicly condemned abolitionism. Theybanded together to disrupt the proceedings in response to the proposed delivery of anantislavery sermon.cdxxviii Mob violence was averted, but some townspeople met on October23 and adopted the following resolutions: as citizens of a free State and a peaceablecommunity, we deprecate any attempt to sow discord among us, or to create an excitement asto abolition which can be productive of no good result . . . the doctrine of immediateemancipation in this country, (although promulgated by those who profess to be christians,)is at variance with christianity, and its tendency is to breed contention, broils and mobs, andthe leaders of those calling themselves abolitionists are designing, ambitious men, anddangerous members of society, and should be shunned by all good citizens.cdxxix SimeonFranciss newspaper rejoiced that public opinion in the frontier states is likely to check atonce the perfidy of these fanatical men [i.e., the abolitionists]. Westerners could not beinduced to visit upon the South such an accumulation of horrors as is embraced in themeaning of those two words universal emancipation.cdxxxFrancis was right; the antislavery movement had great difficulty taking root inIllinois. Between 1817 and 1824, some Illinoisans had waged a successful battle against theintroduction of slavery into their state constitution, but thereafter enthusiasm for theantislavery cause dramatically waned.cdxxxi Before 1837, only one county in the state Putnam had an auxiliary of the American Antislavery Society, although there were 215

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

affiliates of the Society in thirteen states by 1835.cdxxxii Attempts to circulate antislavery

petitions in 1837 fizzled.cdxxxiii In 1841, when the Illinois Antislavery Society dispatched anagent to spread the abolition gospel, Springfield authorities denied him permission tospeak.cdxxxiv Three years later, Ichabod Coddings attempt to deliver an abolitionist lecture inthe capital was thwarted by a mob of perhaps 150, with sticks, boards, horns, &c. whichmade such a noise that it was impossible for him to proceed. Several eggs were thrown athis head. Springfields police looked on and laughed.cdxxxv Simeon Francis noted thatabolitionist is an odious epithet among us; and we do not believe that there are a dozen mento be found in Sangamon county to whom it can be properly applied.cdxxxvi In 1845, aMorgan County abolitionist wrote that there were many warm friends to the slave in histown. Yet quite a large portion of western people, who are anti-slavery in principle and whowill subscribe to all the views of the abolitionists when presented to them in privateconversation, still abhor the name abolitionist, which they associate with not only all thatdoes belong to it, but every thing that possibly can be attached to it that is false, such asamalgamation, circulating inflammatory papers among the negroes in order to instigate themto insurrection, and a desire to do away with slavery by physical force. They also attach tothe name all the views of [William Lloyd] Garrison.cdxxxvii An Urbana newspaper observedthat abolition is considered synonymous with treason, . . . disunion, civil war, anarchy and

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

every horror [of] which an American can conceive.cdxxxviii In such a region at such a time,Lincoln could scarcely expect criticism of slavery to win him popularity.Yet Lincoln clearly had come to loathe slavery by 1837. Two decades later he saidthat I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist. He had notemphasized the slavery issue before 1854, he explained, because until then the peculiarinstitution seemed to be on the wane.cdxxxix His friend Samuel C. Parks asserted that Lincolntold the truth when he said he had always hated slavery as much as any Abolitionist but Ido not know that he deserved a great deal of credit for that for his hatred of oppression &wrong in all its forms was constitutional he could not help it.cdxl Lincoln expressedcompassion for white men forced to labor like slaves. One day at Beardstown, he observed asteamboat crew lugging freight on board, working like galley slaves and being cursed everymoment by the brutal mate. To a friend he freely expressed his disgust at the tyranny of themate and his tender sympathy for the white slaves.cdxli In 1864, Lincoln publicly declaredthat I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can notremember when I did not so think, and feel.cdxlii In 1858, he said: the slavery question oftenbothered me as far back as 1836-1840. I was troubled and grieved over it.cdxliii A friendremembered that in 1837, Lincoln was talking and men were standing up around himlistening to the conversation. . . . One of them asked him if he was an abolitionist. Mr.

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

Lincoln in reply, reached over and laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. [Thomas] Alsoppwho was a strong abolitionist and said, I am mighty near one.cdxliv In 1860, Lincoln statedthat the protest which he and Stone had issued in 1837 briefly defined his position on theslavery question; and so far as it goes, it was then the same that it is now.cdxlvLincoln and Stone, while condemning slavery, also criticized abolitionists: thepromulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its [slaverys]evils. In this, they faintly echoed the committee report to which they were objecting. Thatdocument asserted that abolitionists have forged new irons for the black man, have addedan hundred fold to the rigors of slavery, have scattered the fire brands of discord anddisunion, and have aroused the turbulent passions of the monster mob. The committeecould not conceive how any true friend of the black man can hope to benefit him throughthe instrumentality of abolition societies.cdxlvi This view was not uncommon, even amongfoes of slavery. Elijah P. Lovejoy, the antislavery editor who would die a martyrs death laterin 1837, had three years earlier denounced abolitionists as the worst enemies the poor slaveshave and charged that their efforts were riveting the chains they seek to break.cdxlvii HenryClay declared that abolitionists have done incalculable mischief . . . to the very cause whichthey have espoused. Their actions, Clay insisted, are highly injurious to the slave himself,to the master, and to the harmony of the Union. I believe that, instead of accelerating, theycdxliv Reminiscences of John E. Roll, in John Linden Roll, Sangamo Town, Journal of the Illinois StateHistorical Society 19 (1926-27): 159.cdxlv Autobiography written for John Locke Scripps, [ca. June 1860], Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln,4:65.cdxlvi House Journal, 1836-1837, 241-42 (12 January 1837). The language used by Lincoln and Stone, asWilliam Lee Miller pointed out, was several notches less critical of abolition than was the assemblys. Miller,Lincolns Virtues, 129.cdxlvii Merton Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 47. In1836, the Presbyterian Synod of Illinois, to which Lovejoy belonged, unanimously disapproved the doctrine

405

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

will retard, abolition, and, in the mean time, will check other measures of benevolence andamelioration.cdxlviii In 1838, another Whig leader, the future president William HenryHarrison, similarly remarked that the efforts of the abolitionists (deluded men) would endwith more firmly riveting the chains . . . of those whose cause they advocate.cdxlix EdwardEverett predicted that abolitionist agitation by exasperating the master, can have no othereffect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave.cdl In 1854, the SpringfieldRegister claimed that if it had not been for abolitionism, slavery would have been abolishedin Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and probably in other states. Thesouth by the war made on her rights by the abolitionists, is compelled, by every principle ofself respect and local pride, to maintain her position, and she will do it so long as this war iskept up. The abolitionists, instead of aiding the emancipation of the blacks, only perpetuatetheir bondage.cdliSome abolitionists indulged in harsh rhetoric while carrying out what they termed theduty to rebuke which every inhabitant of the Free States owes to every slaveholder.cdlii In1831, an Illinois antislavery advocate, William M. Stewart, pronounced slave owners guiltyof the most unhallowed and heaven-daring theft and robbery and declared that they weremuch more guilty and deserving of death than many who have been hanged for

that immediate emancipation is the duty of the master, and the right of the slave, irrespective of allconsequences. Dillon, Antislavery Movement in Illinois, 222-23.cdxlviii Clays speech delivered in Lexington, Kentucky, 13 November 1847, Hopkins, ed., Papers of Clay,10:372; Clay to John Greenleaf Whittier, Lexington, Kentucky, 22 July 1837, ibid., 9:64.cdxlix Speech at Vincennes, Indiana, quoted in The Old Soldier (Springfield, Illinois), 2 March 1840.cdl Frothingham, Everett, 132.cdli Illinois State Register (Springfield), 15 April 1854.cdlii Right and Wrong in Boston, no. 2, 53, quoted in Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 18301844 (1933; New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1964), 25.

406

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

kidnapping.cdliii Antislavery petitions denounced the villainous enslavers of souls as land

pirates.cdliv William Lloyd Garrison thundered that every American citizen, who retains ahuman being in involuntary bondage, as his property, is a MAN-STEALER. Hecharacterized the desperadoes from the South, in Congress as the meanest of thieves andthe worst of robbers who were not within the pale of Christianity, of republicanism, ofhumanity.cdlv Garrison called the U.S. Constitution a covenant with death, and anagreement with hell.cdlvi Such heated rhetoric offended some of Garrisons abolitionist allieslike Samuel May, who pleaded: Oh, my friend, do try to moderate your indignation, andkeep more cool!cdlvii Brown University president Francis Wayland condemned Garrisonsnewspaper for its menacing and vindictive stance toward slaveholders, which onlyworsened the plight of the slaves.cdlviii To such critics, Garrison famously replied in the firstissue of The Liberator: I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but isthere not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On

cdliii Illinois Intelligencer, 12 March 1831, quoted in Dillon, Abolitionism Comes to Illinois, 395.cdliv William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York:Knopf, 1995), 108, 129.cdlv Declaration of Sentiments, written for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, quoted in Miller,Arguing About Slavery, 71; The Liberator (Boston), 11:191, quoted in Wendell Phillips Garrison, et al.,William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (4 vols.; New York: Century,1885-89), 3:32-33.cdlvi The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, ed. Walter M. Merrill (6 vols.; Cambridge, Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 1971-81), 1:249; The Liberator (Boston), 3 February 1843.cdlvii John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison, a Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963),126.cdlviii Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St.Martins Press, 1998), 124.

407

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.cdlix Such anapproach to reform was diametrically opposed to Lincolns.cdlxIn a temperance address delivered in 1842, Lincoln criticized hectoring approaches toreform: It is an old and true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon ofgall. So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are hissincere friend. Previous temperance efforts had failed, Lincoln said, because they were ledby Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents whose lack of approachability proved fatal totheir success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest, with thosepersons whom it is their object to convince and persuade. They indulged in too muchdenunciation against dram sellers and dram drinkers, a strategy that proved impolitic,because, it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to any thing; still less to be drivenabout that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to besubmitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite. To expectdenunciation to bring about reform was to expect a reversal of human nature, which isGods decree, and never can be reversed. When the conduct of men is designed to beinfluenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. During theCivil War, Lincoln bemoaned what he called the self-righteousness of the Abolitionistsand the petulent and vicious fretfulness of many radicals. He doubtless felt the same wayabout some abolitionists of the 1830s, whose vituperative, intolerant style alienated potentialrecruits to their worthy cause. In fact, Lincoln may have been trying to persuade abolitioniststo exercise more tact. Clearly the abolition of slavery was on his mind, for in the perorationof this temperance address there appeared a seeming non sequitur: When the victory shallcdlix The Liberator (Boston), 1 January 1831.

408

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

be completewhen there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earthhow proudthe title of that Land, which may truly claim to be the birth-place and cradle of both thoserevolutions, that shall have ended in that victory.cdlxiLincoln may also have been repelled by the anti-Catholic bigotry of some abolitionists,including Elijah P. Lovejoy, a contentious, sternly Puritanical newspaper editor, Presbyterianminister, and bigot who believed, with little reason, that slavery was a papist product.cdlxiiIn 1836, he was hounded out of St. Louis, whose numerous Catholics disliked his referenceto their church as the Mother of Abominations and his warning that Catholicism wasapproaching the Fountain of Protestant Liberty with a stealthy, cat-like step and a hyenagrin, seeking to cast into it the poison of her incantations, more accursed than was everseethed in the Caldron of Hecate.cdlxiii (One Catholic warned Lovejoy that should youcontinue to advance in your dishonest and dishonorable cause of vilifying my religion, Iventure to predict your speedy extinction as an Editor in St. Louis.)cdlxivFifteen years after the Lincoln-Stone protest, Lincoln criticized abolitionists who, likeGarrison, marched beneath the banner inscribed No Union with Slaveholders. In a eulogyon Henry Clay, Lincoln criticized Garrisonians: Those who would shiver into fragments thecdlx Lucas Morel, Lincolns Sacred Effort: Defining Religions Role in American Self-Government (Lanham,Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000), 10, 125-26.cdlxi Basler, ed., Collected Works of Lincoln, 1:271-79; William D. Kelley to the editor of the New YorkTribune, Philadelphia, 23 September 1885, in William D. Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton (New York: G. P.Putnams Sons, 1885), 86; Burlingame and Ettlinger, eds., Hay Diary, 216 (entry for 1 July 1864). Forthoughtful discussions of the temperance address, see Morel, Lincolns Sacred Effort, 125-51, and Miller,Lincolns Virtues, 140-42, 147-53. Lincoln gave other temperance addresses. Basler, ed., Collected Works ofLincoln, 6:487.cdlxii Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 78.cdlxiii Dillon, Lovejoy, 40-41. Lovejoy once denounced a judge as a Papist whose decision in a caserevealed the cloven foot of Jesuitism. The Observer (St. Louis), quoted in Dillon, Antislavery Movement inIllinois, 207.cdlxiv Shepherd of the Valley (St. Louis), 28 February 1834, in Elijah P. Lovejoy As An Anti-Catholic,Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 62 (1951): 174 (no author given).

Michael Burlingame Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. 1, Chapter 4

409

Union of these States; tear to tatters its now venerated constitution; and even burn the lastcopy of the Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, . . . have received, andare receiving their just execration. He praised more moderate opponents of slavery, likeClay, and condemned those pro-slavery apologists who are beginning to assail and toridicule the Declaration of Independence.cdlxvThe Lincoln-Stone protest further declared that the Congress of the United States hasthe power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but thatpower ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District. Lincolnhad unsuccessfully tried to amend the original resolution to permit abolition in the District ifthe people of said District petition for same. (Twelve years later, as a member of Congress,he would frame legislation to rid the District of slavery with such consent.) Unlike thecommittee report to which Lincoln and Stone responded, their protest clearly asserted thatthe Constitution empowered Congress to abolish slavery in the District, a question that washotly debated at the time and became a litmus test distinguishing the friends of slavery fromits foes.cdlxviThe boldness of the Lincoln-Stone protest was uncharacteristic of Lincoln in his twentiesand thirties. When in March 1837 he moved to Springfield from the dying hamlet of NewSalem, he was essentially a skillful partisan whose promise of future statesmanship wouldlong remain unfulfilled.